text:
For the decade that I have been publishing Comic Book Galaxy, it's been a yearly tradition that comics industry folks that I know and like ask me if they'll be seeing me in San Diego. The answer has always been "no," and I always claim (truthfully) that finances and scheduling keep me from attending the week-long event. But there's more to it than that.
I think, after ten years, that if I really wanted to be there, I would, by now, have found some way to make it happen. But the fact of the matter is that my perception of the show over the last decade has been that it's been steadily moving away from comics as comics, and toward a multi-media extravaganza that is pretty much the opposite of what I would want to spend my time and money on.
In a super-long post of thoughts on this year's comicon, Tom Spurgeon talks about the vibe he experienced, and it's everything I don't want to go anywhere near:
"For the first time at Comic-Con in 16 years, I felt surrounded by the film and television industries. I felt like I was attending the comics portion of their show. When I left for the day I felt like the film and television tracks had set the agenda. If I were to casually communicate to anyone who might ask via e-mail how I spent my day, I explained it to them in terms of pushing away from the other end of the exhibition hall rather than embracing the one I love. There are a lot of reasons that film and TV has become so dominant there. It's not just proportion. So many comics companies are movie companies now, first and foremost; others act that way for a long weekend; articles speak solely in cinematic terms. The shift might be best seen in the comics coverage in mainstream sources, both in the pity fuck nature of a lot of it and the fact that most of the comics stories end up being movie and television stories, too. Chew isn't a surprise publishing hit, it's a surprise publishing hit with a fast-track option. The Walking Dead isn't the series that's kept a lot of serial comics buying alive in comics shops and has made a superstar comics writer of Robert Kirkman, it's AMC's The Walking Dead."
I call such a long comment out because I think it's too important to be lumped in with all the other comments that precede and follow it. I admit that a decade ago I thought the Spider-Man movie was somehow comics news; ten years on, I know that such tie-ins are nothing more than a distraction, and that while they may (or may not) be good for the bottom line of the companies and creators involved, they are definitely bad for comics as an artform, and as a community. Which is why I don't care one bit that I have missed a decade of San Diego Comicons, but that it is almost physically painful to me every time I can't afford to go to the Toronto Comic Art Festival.
— Alan David Doane
July 2010
12 posts
"Brendan McCarthy is better than drugs and sex and money." - Frank Santoro
At this year's MoCCA Festival, I bought a copy of Paradax #2 from Frank Santoro's back issue boxes. The issue was published in 1987 by Vortex Comics, and is essentially a vastly superior "Remix" of the Paradax story which originally ran in Eclipse Comics' Strange Days 1984 mini-series.
This past week I re-read Strange Days for the first time in about a decade, and am convinced that this is one of the most under-appreciated comics from the 80s. Strange Days was a three-man anthology, with stories written by a young Peter Milligan and art by McCarthy and Brett Ewins. The series tells three separate tales - Paradax, "a modern superhero for the modern Eighties" and Johnny Nemo, a well-spun future detective sci-fi tale, but its real masterpiece is "Freakwave."
If ever there was a story begging for a high-end, Vertigo-style reprint, it's "Freakwave." The story actually first appeared in Vanguard Illustrated #1-3 (the story in Strange Days #1-3 was the second half of the tale) and was my first introduction to Milligan and McCarthy. It's a tripped out, metaphysical, quasi-religious allegory about a post-apocolyptic earth in which humanity is forced to live on barges and ships, while suffering from mass insanity and neo-sci-punk mutations. But what makes it essential is McCarthy's painted artwork, a surreal combination of Ditko and Robt. Williams.
Which leads me to the title of this post.
During my Shelf Life research, I came across a semi-obscure British fanzine called Ark Magazine. I bought the 27th issue off eBay because it had an interview with the Hernandez Brothers (as well as interviews with Will Eisner and Moebius), but buried near the back, in the middle of the review section, was a guest review of Strange Days written by none other than Grant Morrison. This was in 1987, just after his critical successes with Animal Man and Doom Patrol, but well before his superstar celebrity status.
The full review is below (hopefully the scans are legible). Morrison makes a strong case for "Freakwave" as a classic and I couldn't agree more. Check it out:
— Marc Sobel
Somebody got stabbed in the eye?
Been busy and/or out of it, so here's me catching up on the past couple weeks of comics.
Superman #701
Writer - J. Michael Straczynski. Artist - Eddy Barrows. Publisher - DC Comics
I'm a little later to the table reviewing this, but that's okay because in part I'm commenting on other reviews. OK, so JMS didn't do his homework about South Philly. I think that's significant but very secondary to whether it was a good story or not. And it's not a bad effort, the writing. I think some folks have gotten a little nitpicky regarding the little incidents that Superman has experienced with the townsfolk. No, he needn't fly the old guy to the hospital because it wasn't an emergency. It was enough that he gave him a free x-ray. And no, he didn't need to fix the guy's car after diagnosing the problem with the fuel line. What one should take away from this issue is that JMS wasn't afraid to dispense with several possible stories in order to get right to the most important one, which is the potential suicide story that dominates the second half of the book. This was pretty well done, with Superman listening and promising not to interfere or prevent the woman from jumping if that was what she ultimately chose to do. I liked that. That said, it wasn't any better written than Law & Order, and that's free and this comic is four dollars and none of the characters are any more attractive than Sam Watterston or that guy who played Jesus or whoever stars in Law & Order these days. Barrows draws a credible Superman and that's unfortunately leagues better than the past year's worth of artists on Superman books. I think JMS, his ego demanding a big splash, has hit on one of those unwinnable challenges which is to make Superman relatable to real people and their current problems. That he didn't fail miserably is an accomplishment if not exactly great comics.
Strange Science Fantasy #1
Writer/Artist - Scott Morse. Publisher - IDW Publishing.
If you're going to call to mind EC Comics in your title and cover art, you would do well to present an anthology of several different science fiction/fantasy short stories. Failing that, one good sci-fi story would do. This doesn't even achieve that, with a Kirbyesque build-up towards some mythical new world of gearheads lead by a guy in an illuminated diving helmet called The Headlight that doesn't get anywhere, its overblown and frequently syntax-hostile narration not getting anywhere with the three-panel-per-page format. Despite Scott Morse not actually making any good comics in the near-decade I've been reviewing (Soulwind was completed prior to my start), I still kind of hold out hope for him to rebound. This is just one more impediment.
Amazing Spider-Man #638
Writer/Artist - Joe Quesada. Artist - Paolo Rivera. Publisher - Marvel Comics
I wasn't around for JMS' controversial "One More Day" storyline, which I think was a story put in motion by Quesada to nullify Peter and Mary-Jane Parker's marriage and make Pete a swinging bachelor again. Putting Aunt May's life at stake and making Mephisto the bad guy doesn't sound like something I'd like, plus I think it's a cop-out. There had to be good stories about the married couple beyond the usual MJ-in-jeopardy ones.
That said, I've really been enjoying AMS the past year with the high quality rotating line-up of creators. Filling in the holes of a story I never read isn't something I really wanted, and to be honest, Quesada isn't as good a writer as Mark Waid, Zeb Wells, Fred Van Lente, Joe Kelly or Dan Slott, nor is his art in line with what's been on the book recently. But okay, we've got this "One Moment In Time" thing to get through, and we'll get through it.
Quesada makes a couple odd choices here that I don't think really work. I'd have much preferred all-new material rather than the attempt to weave big chunks of ASM Annual #21 back from 1987 in here with all its mullety, Shooter-plotted, black-suited, Colletta-inked glory. It's ironic, really—Shooter butted in to direct the big story of Peter's wedding to MJ, and now Quesada is taking over a smoothly-running ASM for four issues to flesh out a story that most fans didn't like. You got what you wanted, and based on the subsequent stories, maybe you were right. So then why go back to an era you thought fans didn't like?
In addition to the odd meld of '80s art with Rivera's new stuff, Quesada himself draws a handful of pages—the current stuff, with Mary Jane coming over to finally have a heart-to-heart with Peter about what happened with their wedding. Quesada has a decent ear for dialogue, I'll give him that, and I like his Mary Jane, even if she doesn't have the looks to cut it as a supermodel. She's very girl-next-door, which not only doesn't fit with the supermodel thing but also with scenes where Harry Osborn describes her as the wildest party girl he knows. I did like his Peter, who has a fat face, sunken eyes and no muscle tone, just like me.
Nothing actually happens in this issue.
The Sixth Gun #1 & 2
Writer - Cullen Bunn. Artist - Brian Hurtt. Publisher - Oni Press
Now this is more like it. I must admit, I think Oni has held onto relationships with too many underwhelming creators from their early days. But I did always think Brian Hurtt was talented, and he's lucky to have hooked up with fresh writer Cullen Bunn, who not only clearly has a story to tell but looks like he really wants to tell as much of it as he can each issue, quite counter to the current decompression model.
The story is set in what looks like late 19th Century, and there are already three compelling villains, ghosts, treasure, a fetching female lead, and a cursed gun. All familiar elements but they're blended zestily and with real storytelling authority by Bunn.
—Christopher Allen
On October 5th, 2005, one of the highlights of my life occurred as I got to interview the brilliant Harvey Pekar, the creator of the comic book American Splendor, which literally changed the world of comic books with its unique, autobiographical bent and frank discussion of life and what it is to live it.
American Splendor inspired a movie, and Pekar was able to leverage the greater awareness the movie gave him to create a number of graphic novels he might not otherwise have been able to get to market. Harvey spent his lifetime getting his lyrical everyman stories out into the world, despite frequent challenges presented by his personal life, his full-time job and his health. American Splendor is without question one of the greatest comic book series in history, and Harvey's passing is a sad day for anyone who loves good comics. I loved Harvey Pekar's comics, and I was lucky enough to get to tell him that during the course of this interview, conducted around the time his hardcover Vertigo graphic novel The Quitter was released. The interview was transcribed by Michael Rhode and appears in Rhode's book Harvey Pekar Conversations, published by University Press of Mississippi.
Alan David Doane: Comic book readers have known about Harvey Pekar for many years following your life and times through your series American Splendor. The greater public at large learned about your story through the American Splendor movie a couple of years back. Tell me what effect the movie had on your life and your approach to your comics?
Harvey Pekar: Like I say, I'm just living the way I used to live. I live in the same house, I eat the same food, I dress the same. Y'know, there's not much difference. I'm trying to do as much writing as I possibly can – you know, comic book writing and prose writing because I do reviews and some essays.
Which do you enjoy more – the comics writing or the prose writing? Or is it just two totally different…
I mean comics writing is more important to me than prose writing most of the time because in comics writing I fell like I sort of have kind of an innovative style, and I want to extend that. It's important to me to do kind of new things. The prose stuff that I do – stylistically it's pretty straightforward, although I get really worked about some of the stuff, you know like politics or music reviews or book reviews – things like that. But nobody would have heard of me if it hadn't been for comics. I'm very lucky, and very thankful that I got a few breaks that enabled me to have a career in comics.
Since the movie came out, there have been quite a few really big collections of your previous comics work in addition to your new book, which we're going to talk about in a few minutes. Do you think these collections are helping you to expand your readership?
Yeah, I know they are because they're selling fairly well, and that's something I should say – since the movie, my book sales have really, you know, skyrocketed. I mean going from practically nothing into respectability. I mean I actually for the first time in my life, and I've been doing comics for many, many years, I'm actually making royalties. I feel like that's quite a luxury.
Yeah, but it's a luxury you've certainly worked for with all the years … just from reading your stories… all the years of worrying about paying bills and trying to make the comic successful, it must be quite gratifying.
Yeah, it is very gratifying, but it's like I'm too old to really believe it. You know, every time I get a check or something like that, it's a joke. I go back into my old way of thinking, my pessimistic way of thinking, which is not good. But I dunno. I guess after you get to be a certain age, some people can't change.
Have you received any feedback from new readers? People that have maybe started picking up your stuff since the movie came out?
Oh yeah, I get a lot of positive feedback all the time. Yeah, from new readers. And I enjoy it. My number's in the phone book, so that in case somebody wants to call me after they've seen the movie at 4:30 in the morning on HBO and tell me how much they enjoyed it, they can do that. I hate to miss out on some praise, you know.
Sure, I think all creative people like to hear what people about their work. Who do you think the average reader is that you'd like to reach with your comics work?
I think I have a larger audience in the general book-reading public, than in the comic book area, because comic book fans are, for the most part, superhero fans and my stuff is not about guys going about in spandex suits, punching people and stuff. And so they tend not to be all that interested in my work. I mean, it's not escapist, and that's what they're really looking for is escapism. General readers – since my stuff has come out in trade paperback and it's been available at regular bookstores – that's when my sales really started to go up.
Your work is sort of the opposite of escapism —really completely immersing yourself in the human condition rather than trying to forget about it or ignore it.
Yeah, that's what I try to do. You're exactly right. Thank you.
And I have to say, one of my favorite scenes, and maybe this is a chance to ask you about that, one of my favorite scenes in the movie is that scene right at the beginning with little Harvey going trick-or-treating in just his regular clothes and all the other kids dressed up in superhero costumes – that seemed to me like it was a comment on your place in the comics realm.
Yeah, well, actually, I didn't script that. I just told them… the credit for that scene should go to Bob Pulcini and Shari Berman, the writer-directors. But what I told them was when I was a kid, I didn't go much for playing around and for frills and stuff like that. I used to go trick-or-treating with the other kids, but I wouldn't wear a costume, you know, because that seemed like it was kind of childish or something, or I was above it or something like that, so that's where they got the idea for that.
Paul Giamatti did such a wonderful job in the movie channeling your character, and I'm just wondering, did you stay in contact with him? Did you enjoy his performance?
Oh, I enjoyed it. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, I've stayed in contact with him, although, you know, the more time that elapses between the end of the movie's run and the present, the less I see of him, or have contact with him and the other people in the movie. That being said, I just had breakfast with a couple of HBO employees. I mean, it was just a marvelous experience making that movie. I get asked a lot of times about how Giamatti went about learning to play me, and how he did such a great job, and people assume that he came out to Cleveland, you know, a few weeks early or something, and just shadowed me all the time, and you know, picked up my gestures and things like that, but in actuality, he just got that from videotapes of me, I guess on the Letterman show, and the written work that I've done. He's really a master.
Yeah, that one scene in the movie, where he is watching you… he's sort of semi-off-stage and watching you… he seems to be taking such delight in being in your presence that you got the feeling that he really developed a great affection for you. I think that really came through.
We like each other a lot. He's very nice guy, and a real likable guy. There's no doubt about that, and still, although he's gotten more acclaim, still an underappreciated actor, I think. I think he's one of the best out there.
Yeah, I think the first movie I saw him in was the Howard Stern movie [Private Parts], if you've seen that. He played this vile character, but he did it so well.
Yeah, yeah, the guy where he put on a slight southern accent. Yeah, I remember that.
Well, your new book is The Quitter. It's published by Vertigo Comics and with illustrations by Dean Haspiel. It's described at one point, I think maybe on the back of the book, as sort of a prequel to the movie and having just finished it last night, that seems really apt. It does cover the period from that Halloween scene up until where the rest of the movie really begins, covering a large chunk of your childhood and really filling in a lot of holes. Can you tell me how the idea for finally doing a long-form autobiography like this came about?
Yeah. Actually what happened was the illustrator, Dean Haspiel, was the person who put me in touch with Ted Hope who was the producer of the movie. He was doing some freelance illustration work for Hope and he told him that he had done some work me, and Hope said that he liked my work and he'd be interested in doing a movie based on it. So, my wife and I called and we had a deal with them. I thought, "Good, we're going to get some option money." I didn't, in my wildest dreams, think that we'd be able to sell this movie because who's going to invest a couple million dollars in a movie based on a comic book that sells maybe 3,000 copies a year. But amazingly, Hope was able to sell HBO on the thing, and it's like a storybook kind of tale after that. I mean, it won awards and everything, so at the end of it all, I called up Dean and said, "Look, I really appreciate your tipping Hope off to me. Is there anything within reason that I can do to pay you back?" And he said, "Yeah, let me illustrate a long work of yours." So I said OK, but I didn't off-hand know of anybody who would be interested. He had contacts with DC Comics, more specifically with their Vertigo line which is supposed to be their more intellectual kind of stuff, and because people were still talking about the movie, he was able to interest some editors in my doing something. At first, I thought … they were telling me that they wanted me to do something that was fiction, y'know, and they even said something with a romantic interest and stuff. I tried to do that, you know, like write fiction based on my own experience, but I just saw where for me it would work so much better if I just was as accurate as I could be and didn't gloss over anything. So I wrote the comic like that and just hoped that they would see that it was better that way. And happily they did. They liked it a lot and they really got behind it and the promotion they've done with this book is just incredible. I mean, you know… they've gotten it publicized so well and sales so far have been just terrific, even before the thing's been released. I mean, it's staggering to me.
I have to say, that it's surprising — you mentioned that Vertigo's sort of the intellectual line of DC, but even for a Vertigo title, it really is a strikingly touching and human work that really offers some profound insight into your life. I for one am grateful that they published it. I'm grateful that you took the time to write it.
Well, I think that Vertigo's looking for more stuff like it, in case anybody out there is interested. Some of the stuff that they've done actually hasn't really varied that much from standard comics, but I know that the editors there would like to develop a lot more independent lines. I'm hoping that comics do continue to expand. I was just at a Small Press Expo a couple of weeks ago and I saw some really fine stuff out there, but it was like it was all self-published or the publishers were really small, and I wasn't aware of anybody. Guys were coming up to me and handing me examples of their work, and when I got it back home and got a chance to look at it, I was really impressed, but then I was kind of depressed because nobody knows about these people.
But is that not where you were in, say, 1975-1976?
Yeah, that's where I was… well, I actually thought with the coming of underground comics in the late '60s, well mid-'60s actually I guess it started, that comics would be forever changed. I thought when people saw that you could write about just about anything you wanted to in underground comics, they wouldn't be so under-utilized. In fact, nothing much has changed, and that's pretty distressing for me, that still superhero comics are at the top of the heap, you know, like so many years later. Ok, if people want to like superhero comics, that's fine, but the superhero sub-genre doesn't dominate any other art form, and it certainly shouldn't dominate comics.
And I think we're really in a transitional period right now, and have been probably for the last couple of years, where the greater comics industry, including stuff like the stuff that you do, is expanding into areas like mainstream bookstores and libraries, but the comic shops are kind of entrenched and dug in and continuing to emphasize the superheroes. Meanwhile, also comics from Japan, I think, is another area that's seeing some expansion everywhere except the comics shops. I dunno, I'm starting to see a pattern where perhaps the comics shops are going to be the ones that are left behind as everybody else gets into all the other kind of comics that are out there.
I think they have been hurting. I know a guy who worked with one and lost his job – the place went under. Statistically, there are a lot fewer comics shops now than there were maybe a couple of decades ago. It looked like there was going to be a kind of revival in the eighties, but then it just slowed down again.
Well, there's got to be hope though if DC sees a place for The Quitter in its lineup, don't you think?
Well, but people have to offer them stuff like that. And they have to accept it to. Some of the stuff that I saw, that I was impressed with, would impress a lot of regular comic book readers as being pretty avant-garde. There's a lot of free-association and things like that in it, and I mean, people haven't even accepted James Joyce's Ulysses after all these years and if they see stuff like that in comics, they're going think it's not commercial. There are these commercial considerations. A large company like DC will just go so far; they want to see something proven. If my movie hadn't gone over as well as it did – it made some money and got a lot of artistic approval – if that hadn't a happened, I wouldn't a had a chance with DC.
But I do think it's an incremental thing though. I think that because The Quitter is a success, maybe next year they'll print two or three like that, and year after that, maybe four or five, if it continues to resonate with readers.
Well, I hope so. But then on the other hand, I look back on all the good work that was done in the late '60s by people like Robert Crumb, and Frank Stack, and Spain Rodriguez, and really first class stuff. In my opinion, that was the most fruitful of periods in comic history and yet nothing came of it. The hippies that supported the movement became yuppies after we pulled out of Vietnam and it just went down again. So I'm not takin' anything for granted. I'm gonna to try to take advantage as much as possible of the opportunities I have to write varied kind of stories, like I'm doing one about a woman who went to Macedonia to find out why there was peace there, and there wasn't peace anywhere else in the former Yugoslavia. I'm trying to do quite a variety of things, but I dunno, a lot of people are sort of afraid of that thing. Especially the publishers are afraid of them.
Is there any chance perhaps, some of the artists whose work you encountered at the Small Press Expo, maybe you'll do some work with some of them?
Well, that would be just … if I did, they would just be illustrating it, I'd be writing the stories. I sincerely think that some of those people out there are very good and deserve to be recognized nationally. But with all avant-garde art in the past century, it's been very hard for the general public to accept. I mentioned Ulysses, I could mention Arnold Schoenberg's work – 100 years after he started doing the stuff — it's still not accepted – atonal music that is. People still don't like non-objective paintings. There used to be a time lag that used to be overcome between the time a piece of art came out, a challenging piece of art, and the time the public would be able to figure out where it was coming from. But now, it's like a permanent time lag. It's like there's just no acceptance by the general public of anything that was done after like 1925 or something.
At least as far as comics go, I guess maybe I have a little more of an optimistic view, and again, looking at as kind of a transitional period over the last couple of years, where we've seen companies like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly start to pick up business in the bookstores and start to make some inroads with libraries and things like that. I really think that there's an awful lot of good comics that are being published today especially by companies like Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, Pantheon, the publishers that you've been working with… I've been reading comics for over thirty years and it does seem there's always, if you know where to look, and it is sometimes hard to find it, but there always is good quality work being done and it seems to me we're seeing a lot more mention of it in the media and the press in the last couple of years, and that kind of gives me hope, I guess.
Well, I hope you're right. I have a tendency to be pessimistic, and I hope you're right, and I'm not convinced. I'm just going to try to do as much as I can to put out good work. I also try and interest editors in some of these young artists I run across and I hope that some of their work will be more widely read.
Well, as far as your own work, what does the future hold for American Splendor as a brand? Will there be any more single issues? Or just books for a while?
Yeah, I think so. I'm working on something with DC… we've just laid the groundwork for a deal … they wanted me to do like four 32-page comic books a year, and maybe collect them at the end of the year, or something like that, in a trade paperback. So I need a place to do shorter stories – that's mostly what I've done are shorter stories — but I want to continue to write, now that I've had the opportunity, continue to write the longer pieces too, and I have two more works, longer pieces, in the process of being done and I plan to write more.
I'm very, very glad to hear that, as somebody who's been reading your work for about twenty-five years now. As long as you keep writing it, I'll keep reading it.
Well, thanks a lot. I appreciate that very much.
It's really been an honor and a pleasure to talk to you Harvey. I appreciate it and best of luck with the new book.
Thanks very much for your kindness. Take it easy.
Thanks, you too.
Before I get to the reviews, I just wanted to say that I'm saddened by the passing of Harvey Pekar. I remember Harv going all the way back to his infamous Letterman appearances. Although I was attracted to Letterman at my young age for his irreverence, it was Harvey who ended up impressing me then with how his irreverence wasn't an act that could be channeled and packaged. He said what he wanted to, and damn the consequences, and that was instructive to me.
I didn't really connect him then with comics, and it wasn't until maybe 15 years ago that I started reading any of them, a couple of the big anthologies being the best representation of his work, his ability to convey a lifetime of frustration and compassion in one sharply observed moment after another.
I'm not the biggest Pekar fan. Most of his work this decade didn't quite work for me, from The Quitter to most of his Vertigo stories and the various more biographical or journalistic efforts he scripted to make a living. Even when I didn't care for it, there was no feeling that his was a talent that would dissipate. There was always the next story to look forward to. And now there isn't, and that's a shame. But there's an excellent body of work left behind to read again, and again.
Batman: Odyssey #1 (of 6)
Writer/Artist - Neal Adams
Publisher - DC Comics
For years, thousands of fanboys have wanted Neal Adams to return to the drawing board for another Batman adventure. Conceivably, a couple dozen of them wanted Adams to write the script as well, and, narrowing it down further, maybe a few wanted it to involve gun control.
Sporting dialogue only slightly more naturalistic than Jack Kirby's, Adams begins this journey in the early days of Batman, back when he used to wield dual chrome-plated .45s. With a stunning fight scene on top of a speeding European train and less stunning Man-Bat hijinx setting up a plot thread, Adams brings his heavily-rendered best to make something of beauty and meaning, setting in motion a "year one" story not just about Batman acquiring skills but about Bruce Wayne realizing that as much as he's motivated by his parents' murders, he's not a killer. And you know, even though it's a bit clunky, I give him a lot of credit for the effort instead of phoning it in.
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper #1 (of 3)
Story - Rober Bloch
Scripters - Joe R. Lansdale, John L. Lansdale
Artist - Kevin Colden
Publisher - IDW Publishing
I like Bloch's writing. I like Lansdale's writing, too. Having Joe and what I'm guessing is his brother adapt a classic Bloch story seems like a natural. However, it just doesn't work. It could be that a three issue format is too restrictive. It could be that John L. is doing the lion's share of the writing and isn't as good as his brother. Either or both of those could explain the flat scripting, where pages go by with no punch on the last panel, no music to the dialogue, no investment in any of the characters and no feeling of anything at stake. Sure, it's a period story and it's not like I'm worried about an aged, demonic, reptilian Jack the Ripper checking if my front door is unlocked. Still, if Colden could draw an appropriately scary Ripper and use his gray tones, bloody reds and copious Zipatone in ways that tell the story dramatically rather than distract from it, I might be on board. As it is, I can admire this or that panel's Saul Bassian composition while still being left really cold. I already liked Joe Lansdale, and Bloch, and Colden has some skills. But they're just not meshing together here.
X-Men (vol. 3) #1
Writer - Victor Gischler
Penciler - Paco Medina
Inker - Juan Vlasco
Publisher - Marvel Comics
I've been enjoying Gischler's writing on Deadpool: Merc With A Mouth, which, although lightweight, usually has some good jokes and decent action setpieces. Here, he gets a little more serious. I guess that's necessary, though it makes it difficult to get what makes Gischler anything other than a run-of-the-mill X-Men writer.
Here, we meet old friend Jubilee, who lost her powers at some point. The Second Coming storyline has just wrapped up and so, in contrived fashion, Cyclops sends Pixie to check in on Jubilee, and their outdoor coffee date is broken up by a vampire martyr who exposes himself to sunlight and explodes his bloodsucking virus all over everyone, including Jubilee. For now, she's resisting, but the same can't be said for the other patrons, who answer the call of the Master like leather-clad lemmings. Wolverine, Angel and Pixie investigate, with Storm being left behind because of her past involvement with Dracula. As readers of the Death of Dracula one-shot a couple weeks ago already know, there's a new Lord of Vampires in town, and he's got some fresh new recruiting tactics.
This was pretty okay, both art and story. Nothing really exciting but aside from a weakish X-Men team (Gischler will have his hands full trying to make me care about Jubilee, Angel and Pixie), it works well enough and at least the pacing is brisk, with a lot more happening here than any individual chapter of Second Coming.
—Christopher Allen
Of course, by now, you've no doubt heard the sad news of the death of Harvey Pekar. Although an outsider by choice, Pekar was a giant in the industry, an everyman whose passion for comics and keen eye for human psychology made him a favorite among comics fans, and following the success of the American Splendor movie, a minor celebrity.
Most of the eulogies and remembrances will understandably and deservedly focus on Pekar's long-running series, American Splendor, which began as a self-published underground and eventually found decent-sized audiences through Dark Horse and Vertigo mini-series. These are all worth reading and re-reading, but I wanted to draw a little attention to Pekar's final work, which I think is not only vastly under-rated, but may well have been his crowning achievement – the adaptation of Studs Terkel's Working.
Like many fans, this book slipped under my radar because it was published not by any of the traditional comic book publishers, but by The New Press, a non-profit publisher devoted to keeping important works in perpetual print. The New Press is a staunch advocate of Terkel's writing, and thus was the perfect home for Pekar's (and Paul Buhle's) anthology.
I only became aware of this book when I saw it at the 2009 MoCCA festival. Flipping through its black and white pages left little impression on me; however, since I'm a big fan of Terkel's writing, and oral histories in general, I decided to give it a shot. Still, it was only when I was assigned to review this book for the Comics Journal that I came to truly appreciate what a masterpiece it is. I had Working at #2 on my Best of 2009 list but, as far as I know, I was the only reviewer even to include it. I summed it up this way:
"This collection features dozens of stellar interpretations of everyday people, from migrant farm workers to jazz musicians, barbers to hookers. While not perfect (what anthology is?), its hit rate is in the 80-90% range, and many of the stories are so powerful, they'll forever change the way you view certain occupations. The book, on the whole, paints a fascinating portrait of blue collar America, and is also a study in the deep and meaningful ways that our jobs impact our identities. It's also a reminder that Terkel is a national treasure and one of America's great writers. Working is unquestionably 2009's overlooked masterpiece."
Rather than expound further upon the book's considerable merits here, I'll refer you to my review at the Comics Journal's website.
Like Terkel, Pekar was also a national treasure, a man who found great inspiration and beauty in the everyday lives of ordinary people. If you are a fan of either writer, I strongly encourage you to give this book a chance (you can order it direct from the publisher here or from Amazon here). It's the perfect bookend for Pekar's long and impressive career.
- Marc Sobel
Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps. Written by Peter J. Tomasi and illustrated by Patrick Gleason.
Imagine what would be your worst ever movie-going experience. Mine would go something like this…
I'm watching Star Wars for the very first time. Luke and all the other pilots are preparing for battle: Luke says good-bye to Han, gets a kiss from Leia and gets in his ship. Then there's a huge battle in outer space: Luke has the last shot to destroy the Death Star, Darth Vader is overhead, Obi-Wan says, "Use the Force, Luke" and suddenly…
Luke and Han get medals! The robots are all shiny! Chewbacca growls! The credits roll.
For some inexplicably bizarre and stupid reason the reels have been switched, the scene was snipped, the dvd skipped – whatever the reason, I've just seen the conclusion to an epic film but the final battle scene was missing!
Can you imagine what that would be like? How awful that would be? – Well, congratulations! Because that's what it's like to experience the new hardcover collection Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps.
The entire Blackest Night story is a huge, sprawling event that takes the structure of The Sinestro Corps War and, like every sequel to a blockbuster event, does it exactly the same but this time it's much, much bigger!
So instead of it just being two main books and some one-shots, this epic took place through three books that had intertwining stories, along with a bunch of three issue mini-series, plus a month of one-shots that revived canceled titles for a single issue, and on top of all that there was a mini-series that dealt with characters from the various Roy G. Biv corps.
With more than fifty issues making up the entire tale, there were obviously going to be some challenges when it came to collecting the entire sprawling storyline. But how to overcome those challenges and ensure the new collections worked both individually and as a large, multi-volume epic?
A while back, I wrote in my review of The Invincible Iron Man Volume 1 that I was astonished the way Marvel inserted a one-page note in the collection that explained that a whole bunch of stuff had happened to Tony Stark off-stage, that there was a story that completed changed everything that I'd been reading, but I couldn't read that story because it wasn't in the collection, and, in essence, I'd just have to trust them and go with the flow.
At the time I was dumbfounded that a company could publish a collection of stories that would be so incomplete that they would in essence add a footnote to explain a major event rather than show it. How could they hope to grab new readers if this is the way they treated them?
Well now, DC has done Marvel one better. They saw their competition's mistake and they learned from it. But they learned in the wrong direction. They saw Marvel's stupidity, and then raised them. It was like they said, "Wow, was that dumb. But we can do worse!"
Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps has eight issues of GLC goodness: it starts with an introduction that tells "The Story So Far…" and then quickly kicks into gear as dead corps members become re-animated corpses (which is kind of a neat pun, the "corps" becoming "corpses"),Mogo is endangered, Kilowog gets pissed off, Kyle is mortally wounded, Guy gets possessed by one of the evil corps. There's passion, betrayal, love… the book has it all.
On the final page of the second last chapter of the collection, Guy Gardner leads a militia of multi-colored ringed warriors with the battle cry "… Let's bring the pain to Nekron!" It's a thrilling call to action as they fly towards an uncertain fate…
And you flip the page and…
Guy Gardner is saying "Let's power this bad boy up!" and all of the Green Lantern corps members are smiling and their rings are all glowing brightly. And then there's a splash page. And then Guy says, "Well, our big green light bulb's all shiny and screwed in tight." And then Kyle says something and they chat and they joke and they smile…
And I swear that anyone reading these stories for the first time in their collected form would say, "What the hell?!? Did I miss something? Did I buy a misprinted edition?"
Because, unlike the page that is reproduced here, there is no mention of any other books that should be read because the tiny caption "Follow the corps into Blackest Night #8" has been removed from the page. There is no indication that the story concludes in the final chapter of the Blackest Night collection, no description of what happens in that issue, and there is certainly no mention that this volume is therefore incomplete and will not make any sense without that story.
Because, unlike the page that is reproduced here, there is no mention of any other books that should be read because the tiny caption "Follow the corps into Blackest Night #8" has been removed from the page. There is no indication that the story concludes in the final chapter of the Blackest Night collection, no description of what happens in that issue, and there is certainly no mention that this volume is therefore incomplete and will not make any sense without that story.
No note from the writer or editor. No background information on the stories in the other books. No interviews with the creators. There are a couple of extra pages in the back of the book with the variant covers and some character sketches of the characters as Black Lanterns. And that is it.
Oh, but the final page of the volume is an advertisement that says "Follow the complete Blackest Night saga in these graphic novels." Which isn't very helpful because it doesn't say where the story concludes.
Here's what would have been a truthful description to put on the book's back cover: "Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps has eight issues of adventure. And a ninth issue that's an epilogue to a conclusion of an epic battle that isn't in this book but probably maybe hopefully appears somewhere else."
One would have to think that at some time the question must have arose in DC's editorial department, "How should we collect all of these issues for the fans who will re-buy the stories to have them on their bookshelves, for those who wait for the trades, and for bookstore readers who might buy one of the books without having knowledge of the other collections? How do we communicate that this is a multi-volume story that has to be read as a complete work? How can we best serve our customers?"
The short answer: not very well.
The longer answer: they've got some serious explaining to do. Because to collect the various issues of the company's biggest crossover series without acknowledging that there are other books that are essential for the story to make any semblance of sense, to slap a logo on a book and hope that it will suffice, to not even write a description of what happened or say where the story concludes, to leave that sort of gaping hole in a book…
It's like never finding out whether that damn Death Star got blown up or not.
And for an industry that is trying to grow its market share through bookstore sales, that is just dumb-ass stupid.
— Kevin Pasquino
Wizard Magazine (Aug 2010)
Guest Editor - Mark Millar
You know, I should probably catch up on some Mark Millar comics and then maybe I can be pissed off at him like the rest of the Internet. But for now, Nemesis and Ultimate Avengers and Kick Ass 2 will have to wait and I can talk about his guest-edited issue of the struggling Wizard, the first issue I bought this decade (counting 2010 as part of the decade starting with 2001).
Who knows what Wizard's been like recently but there doesn't appear to be much for Millar to ruin. It's boyish geek fun and Millar fits right in. Better yet, he has a higher yield friend list than regular editor Mike Cotton, so he can set up roundtable discussions with superhero filmmakers like Zak Penn, Tom De Santo, Eli Roth and more, as well as being able to pull quotes from collaborators and Marvel buddies like Frank Quitely, John Romita, Jr., WCarlos Pacheco and Jason Aaron about the first comic that gave them a boner.
Wizard's and Millar's appeal are similar—lowbrow, rude and immature—so he's a good fit for the magazine beyond just his ability to text ringers, tell Stan Lee anecdotes and drop a preview puff piece on his next Icon book, Superior, which hopefully isn't another "next step for superheroes" books undone by his worst instincts, although the multiple sclerosis angle is concerning.
And Cotton, who appears to have gotten some of the issue put together already, has a decent Seth Rogen interview that almost nullifies the dread I'm feeling about Green Hornet, plus there's a really funny conversation between actors Michael Cera and Clark (Kick Ass) Duke that marks Duke as one to watch and Cera as having a darker comedic edge than the sweet characters he plays. Although thin for a magazine (there's about 45 pages of content), it was all pretty enjoyable aside from too-easy Twitter exchange between Dr. Doom and other villains by Gail Simone and a guest-edited letters page that finds Stan Lee dialed way down in energy, nearly hypobolic. Oh, and the article on Wally Wood, while unexpected and tonally dissonant from the rest of the mag, was strong despite its brevity, and classed things up a notch.
—Christopher Allen
In this, the Golden Age of Reprints, it seems like the majority of the great comic book stories and strips have been, or are being, collected. But there is still a lot of good, interesting, or charmingly bad work that hasn't been reprinted. Growing up, I was a Marvel reader all the way. I could list the DC comics I owned on one hand.
Obviously, that eventually changed, and I won't bore you with the details, but despite having a decent grounding in DC history, I've been wanting to dig deeper, especially back to the '60s and '70s for some books and characters that never really caught on. And so, through the miracle of eBay, we arrive at this 1975 DC series, a funky failure known as 1st Issue Special. Similar in format to the '50s series Showcase, which debuted the Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern we all know, love and insist on resurrecting, and which also featured the first appearances of enduring characters like the Challengers of the Unknown, the Metal Men and Hawk and Dove, 1st Issue spawned few recurring characters in its thirteen issues. In fact, some of the characters had debuted elsewhere, and only one, Mike Grell's The Warlord, would go onto its own immediate series.
1st Issue Special #1: Atlas the Great
Writer/Artist - Jack Kirby. Inker - D. Bruce Berry
"See! His arms crush the stones like biscuits!"
Having Jack Kirby write and draw an introductory issue of a possible series and then letting him wait for sales figures and reader response to come in before DC decided if they wanted to continue with it probably wasn't a very good idea. By the time the votes were in, Kirby and his restless imagination had moved on to new ideas and characters. Still, having Kirby and others present visions of of what might have been for the DC Universe was an idea that at least provided a better than average kind of "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" run of comics.
This first issue introduces Atlas, a buff warrior who is not just the young boy bent on revenge against the oppressive ruler who killed his father, but who is also a Chosen One type whose tremendous strength and insolence is mitigated by the fact he happens to be on the side of justice.
In the first eight pages, we see the shirtless strongman, Atlas, do nothing but kick ass. He destroys some stone beams in the square of a typically primitive-but-advanced Kirby village as a barker challenges the crowd to produce a champion man enough to best Atlas. With little effort, the once-mighty Kargin is not just beaten but smashed through the wooden stage. Some onlookers are amazed while others think it's trickery, but before anyone can act next, a royal contingent comes through the street, rudely butting aside the "rabble," which causes a swift reprisal from Atlas.
It's not until he hears the familiar voice of Hyssa, the reptilian ruler who enslaved his mother, killed his father and burned his village does Atlas stop to reflect, at which point we get the origin showing those very things as well as the young Atlas' Herculean feats that finally result in his journey into Lizard Country.
I mean no disrespect when I speculate that Kirby probably whipped up this story in about fifteen minutes. It's pure Kirby without heady concepts, and with only two significant characters, the evil oppressor and the man of the people who refuses to be oppressed.
I can kind of understand why Atlas didn't get his own series. Kirby didn't seem to have a lot of support within DC and previous, superior work there like his various "Fourth World" books like New Gods and Mister Miracle had already gotten the ax. Atlas' first story was rather elegantly told, cutting away to flashbacks before setting up the Atlas/Hyssa conflict at the end that would obviously drive the prospective series. But with its simplicity, and Atlas' odd hood-and-metal-face-frame-with-no-shirt outfit, there was little to suggest that an Atlas book would succeed where the other Kirby efforts for DC mostly hadn't.
As a post-script, Atlas remained unused, but for radically different interpretations and/or alternate universe appearances in books like Kingdom Come and All Star Superman, until James Robinson brought him into the DCU in his Superman run, making him a kind of gray area villain somewhat along the lines of Marvel's Namor. With Robinson now off the Superman books but still writing Justice League, it's unclear if he'll continue using Atlas.
1st Issue Special #2 - The Green Team: Boy Millionaires
Writer - Joe Simon
Artist - Jerry Grandenetti
"Hmm, it smells good! What's this here city made of, Dinkle?"
"French fries."
Former Kirby partner Simon, who had once again worked with Kirby prior to this outing on the 1974 update of their Golden Age Sandman, here revisits kid gang territory with "The Green Team," a foursome of kid millionaires keen on adventure. Simon had struck out with prior attempts at DC at comics geared at the youth subculture in Brother Power the Geek and Prez, but clearly something compelled the man to keep trying offbeat ideas rather than just script any regular DC heroes. This would be admirable if the Green Team was any good.
Although the name today might suggest some ecology-minded kids trying to connect to and protect nature, this Green Team are just spoiled millionaires looking for kicks, although Simon doesn't seem able to come up with anything grand enough. For instance, shipping magnate Commodore Murphy buys a small town just so he can sail his advanced toy boat in the town's pond, while Cecil Sunbeam plays at being a studio mogul and film director as childishly as many of the adults who really hold those jobs. Simon barely gives his characters even the sketchy characterization of the Newsboy Legion. As he recounted later, The Green Team was basically Richie Rich x 4, and the only differences between Commodore Murphy and J.P. Houston was that Houston wears a cowboy hat and says, "podner," while Cecil drops the cloying epithet, "sweetie," in a stereotypical Hollywood, not homosexual, way.
The only distinct member of the team is Abdul Smith, African-American shoeshine boy (stay with me) who really wants to join, and through a banking miscalculation on a five dollar deposit, he suddenly has the million dollars needed to join the team. Why Abdul wants to suddenly put up his fortune to hang out with three white kids who aren't his friends and with whom he has nothing really in common is a question Simon isn't interested in exploring in this issue. He wants to get right to the wacky adventuring, which in this case isn't much of an adventure at all but a poorly-executed tale of EC Comics-style comeuppance. A shameless Broadway producer, David D. Merritt (based on David Merrick) is for some reason angry at the Green Team when their promotion of an invention they bankrolled, the Pleasure Machine (don't worry, it's an all-ages comic) is thought by one onlooker to be a Merritt stunt. No, the motivation doesn't make any sense, does it? Merritt jumps in the Pleasure Machine to be the first passenger on the ten day maiden voyage. Making it last ten days has no positive impact on the story and in fact leads to several boring, yet nonsensical, panels of the Green Team watching Merritt on a monitor, lamenting the cool kicks they're missing that, as described earlier, are only happening in Merritt's mind and thus not filmable.
When Merritt finally emerges, he's lost his mind, and what was meant as a zany, lighthearted teen comic, complete with breezy, sloppy, sub-sub-Jack Davis art by Grandenetti, has now become a dark-tinged travesty. It's like wiping your ass with a birthday balloon.
Somehow, two issues of a Green Team series were readied but were victims of the 1978 DC Implosion and never officially published. The characters have made brief appearances in a Dan Jurgens Superman and a Grant Morrison Animal Man, and it's more than they deserve.
1st Issue Special #3 - Metamorpho
Writer - Bob Haney
Artist - Ramona Fradon
"Do not interfere, m'sieur, or the blade that dispatched a dozen mamelukes will cause your fool's blood to flow like water!"
Why end on soiled balloons? The third issue is not a debut story like the previous two. As the cover proclaims, "The Fabulous Freak Returns," meaning Metamorpho the Element Man. Also returning are co-creators Haney and the semi-retired Fradon.
Again, I was not a DC reader when these issues first came out, but I think my six year old self would have dug this, and now that I've seen enough sophisticated, dark, "mature" superhero books to hold me, I've come back to being able to appreciate such a bouncy, unpretentious adventure like this one. Rex (Metamorpho) and his girlfriend Sapphire are sightseeing in Washington, D.C., her protective dad and simian chauffeur/bodyguard Java in tow, when a cane-wielding ghost right out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon tries taking down the monuments as revenge for several Presidents never listening to his spectral advice about the gaseous weapon he'd first created to win the Revolutionary War. It's nutty as hell but Fradon, while not in peak form, is still plenty enjoyable to look at, especially the Elderesque wide-eyed, toothsome Sapphire and the many chemical contortions of Metamorpho. She turns Haney's cheesy script into a souffle'. It doesn't appear to have led to more adventures at the time, but that's your lost, 1970s.
Next time - issues 4-6, with the two remaining Kirby efforts for the series, as well Bob Kanigher's rape-busting Police Woman ripoff, "Lady Cop."
—Christopher Allen
by Kevin Pasquino
A month of super-sized anniversary issues from DC has brought a mixed bag of results.
Wonder Woman #600 has managed to get the most coverage from the mainstream media because of her 1990-esque Animal Man / Starman / Superboy inspired jacket-wearing image makeover. A picture (and a costume change) is worth a thousand words and everyone seemed to be falling over themselves to give an opinion of the new outfit.
But before reading the main story that reveals the changes for the character, there is a plethora of tales by George Perez, Gail Simone and Amanda Conner (who wrote and drew my favorite story in the whole issue because it captured both the majesty and naiveté of Wonder Woman as she shares an adventure with Power Girl) as well as other creators who focus on the now Classic Coke version of the Amazon.
There are also pin-ups by Greg Horn, Adam Hughes, Phil Jiminez and a bunch of other artists.
All of this plus an introduction by Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman more than 30 years ago on television – it even includes an old, grainy photo of Carter in her TV costume.
And after reading the introduction, flipping past innumerable pin-ups and reading four different stories about the out-going Amazon, the spectacular display of nostalgia only serves to bury the lead and actually diminish the issue's main event.
J. Michael Straczynski has been given the Herculean (okay, the "Amazonian") task of rebooting an iconic character who many feel has been stagnant for too many years. Gone is Paradise Island, her mother and most of the other Amazons. Wonder Woman, much like the new Doctor Who, is now alone and starting anew with only modest nods to the lackluster but weighty continuity of almost seventy years.
It's understandable that the classic but outdated bathing suit costume had to be turfed, but there is more than a little bit of irony in the fact that the pin-ups in the book make the old outfit look so damn good. Artist Don Kramer does an adequate job of trying to depict the heroine's new Jim Lee-created costume design – although it is strange that the first splash page in the story is a view of Wonder Woman's derriere and the second splash page has her looking away from the reader. It's not until the very end of the issue, and not in the actual story itself, that we get a proper look at the new costume.
(Oh, and could someone please explain to DC how to do magazine layout properly: the two page "Behind the Scenes: The New Costume" article is buried behind the annoying sneak preview of Action Comics #890 that has overstayed its welcome through most of this month's DC books. The preview acts as a jarring disconnect in the book and it could have been prevented with a tiny bit of editorial common sense. It's really simple: if there's an interview with the creators of a story, put it next to the story! Don't put it after a five page in-house advertisement.)
It will be interesting to see if JMS's intention is to make Wonder Woman less of a classic princess and more of a modern day warrior. I suspect that all of this is with an eye on a future movie and will act as a way of testing just how far an iconic character can be re-shaped for a big budget audience without completely destroying what made her interesting. All of the publicity generated by the new costume has people talking and taking notice. But it's unfortunate that any reader who hops on-board has to wade through a handful of stories that look at the character through a nostalgic rear view mirror and then only gets a ten page tease of what's to come.
Superman #700
JMS has also been tasked with taking Superman to new heights, but for some strange reason he's going to this by keeping him on the ground.
As in the Wonder Woman issue, the main story is the final one in the book and first we have to make our way through two minor adventures.
The first story, written by James Robinson, wraps up the "New Krypton" storyline that managed to pollute the Superman books for the past year: it was the forgettable saga that had DC's most famous hero jettisoned from the book that carries his name as well as his other regular titles in order to focus on Mon-El, The Guardian and Flamebird & Nightwing.
(And let's be clear on this marketing blunder: not having Superman star in a book called Superman is like advertising a sexy action movie starring Megan Fox when in fact the main character is Joan Rivers. Even if the Wonder Woman costume turns out to be a misfire, it still won't be as ill-conceived as the "New Krypton" storyline.)
In Robinson's story, Superman is finally re-united with Lois Lane, he knocks out the Parasite, and Superman and Lois share a passionate kiss (and, as an aside, I hope Parasite is incredibly unconscious and there are no security cameras in the warehouse because, if not, I can't help but think someone would say, "Hey, why is Lois Lane snogging Superman when she's married to Clark Kent?… Oh, damn, I get it! Hey guys, look what I just figured out!")
Lois and Clark then kiss and snuggle some more, she calls Clark "Baby" a couple of times and then she says, "Promise me you'll never leave me like that again." He tells her he can't make that promise because, well, he's Superman and sometimes duty calls. And he can't make that promise because 27 pages later he leaves her again. It's almost like the "New Krypton" non-saga never happened. And that ain't necessarily a bad way of looking at it.
The second story in the book is by Dan Jurgens and it's kind of a nostalgic throw-away little nothing that has Superman meet up with a young Dick Grayson. The story is somewhat charming but has no urgency or importance.
The book's final story is the JMS main event and the central part of the tale has a woman slap Superman (and please take a look at the key panel and try to figure out how such an awkwardly drawn slap gets approved by an editor — the way it's drawn, it's impossible for her to have slapped Superman unless she hit him from above his head, which is a weird way to slap anyone) and she then curses the superhero for not being on Earth to save her terminally ill husband.
Superman doesn't respond to the slap by explaining that it's impossible for him to help everyone, or that he was busy trying to save the planet and the entire human race, or that sometimes bad things happen to good people. Instead, the Man of Steel gets all depressed and decides to go for a long walk. For the foreseeable future he will journey across America and, in a bit of mainstream media pandering, maybe even visit your home town!!
When I finished the story, I couldn't help but think: Wow, is Lois Lane ever going to be pissed off. He just got back from New Krypton and now he's literally walking away from her. What a jerk.
I hope that this storyline unfolds on some level other than "Superman discovers himself by discovering America" because if I was given a choice between a cosmic Superman (a la Grant Morrison's award-winning All-Star Superman and Geoff Johns' Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes) or a sad-sack Superman re-creating the dramatic role of the dog from "The Littlest Hobo" as he wanders from town-to-town, I'd much rather spend time with the cosmic superhero from Krypton than the depressed guy who's wondering why that crying woman is so angry at him.
Batman #700
Speaking of Grant Morrison, he's responsible for the whole story in Batman #700 and except for the jarring changes in the art quality (more Frank Quitely would have been a good thing) the issue beautifully illustrates why Batman is such an enduring character.
The story, taking place yesterday, today and in a bunch of tomorrows, has multiple Batmen (Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne and others) solving a time-travelling mystery. The story continues Morrison's on-going mission to make all of the stories from Batman's long publishing history part of the current continuity. Sometimes Morrison succeeds in his attempt ("The Black Glove" storyline, for instance) and other times it falls somewhat flat (the most recent issue of The Return of Bruce Wayne and its pirate story seemed rather pointless), but at the very least Morrison challenges himself and his readers to embrace the past rather than shove it into a closet like an embarrassing, drooling old uncle.
More than any other writer currently doing mainstream comics, Morrison conveys a tremendous sense of fun and enthusiasm in his work. Writers such as JMS want to bring heroes down to earth (quite literally in Superman's case) and make them more accessible and approachable for readers. Morrison goes the other way: his Batman is a SUPER hero who has fabulous weird adventures with wild, crazy villains. There is an undeniable sense of wonder and amazement with Morrison. And it is because of Morrison's talent that Batman currently soars higher than Superman.
So, three giant-sized anniversary issues: the Wonder Woman issue makes me curious about the character's future; the Superman issue has me concerned that he is just going to mope his way across America; and the Batman issue makes me wish that Grant Morrison had written the other two.
Wonder Woman #600
Writers - Gail Simone, J. Michael Straczynski, Amanda Conner, Louise Simonson, Geoff Johns
Artists - George Perez, Don Kramer, Amanda Conner, Eduardo Pansica
Publisher - DC Comics
I've sampled Wonder Woman precious few times in my 30+ years of comics reading, and often not "representative" runs. I mean, I've never read George Perez' or Greg Rucka's runs, but I've read John Byrne's and the Denny O'Neil/Mike Sekowsky "mod" period. I'm no Wonder Woman expert, nor am I beholden to a specific characterization or focus for the character. Emphasize her mythological roots and Paradise Island conflicts, or go single woman alone in the city, whatever. Just give me a good story.
Gail Simone gets to conclude her run with a short story that finds Wonder Woman leading a huge group of female superheroes into battle. They talk about her, as a way for Simone to establish Diana's status as the most esteemed herone in the DCU. Then, Diana cuts things short in order to attend the graduation of Cassandra, a young woman I seem to recall from Byrne's run, who was turned into a winged creature as well as feeling abandoned by Diana (probably because successive writers didn't want to deal with Diana as surrogate mother). George Perez pencils it, and it's nice, though inker Scott Koblish mutes some of the more recognizable aspects of Perez' style. I guess I should give the story a pass as it seems to be a sincere attempt to wrap up some old continuity with emotion. Still, there's not much going on in the story. I was also a bit confused to see some unfamiliar characters like "Miss Martian." Is there a female version of every DC male?
Amanda Conner's team-up with Diana and Power Girl is cute, and closer to what a Wonder Woman book targeted for girl readers should be, although Conner leans hard on a joke about Egg Fu (now called Chang Tsu) looking like a "manga monster." I suppose even if she wanted to, DC wouldn't let her use the word, "hentai," but that's really the origin of the joke.
Louise Simonson and Eduardo Pansica follow with an inoffensive team-up with Superman, and then Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins offer what appears to be an attempt to provide a bridge between the past run and Straczynski's new take on the character: more urban, confused, on the run, and wearing a controversial new costume. I'm curious why Straczynski didn't write the bridging story himself, but then, it actually serves to undercut the shock of his changes by giving the impression Diana just ended up down a continuity rabbit hole and things might get back to normal really soon.
Straczynski's story itself is intriguing enough, but it would be hard not to be when you take a handful of pages to show that a 70 year old character's whole history has now changed. The proof of the pudding will be whether readers like what Straczynski choose to replace that history. Although Don Kramer's art is resolutely DC house style—bland faces, thin lines, overrendered—there's nothing really wrong with it. I'm more concerned with Straczynski and his need to make a splash—was "Couture Shock" the best title anyone could come up with? It puts too much emphasis on the costume change than the events of the story, and believe me, you don't want readers thinking about that garish, busy, uniconic costume any more than necessary.
The rest of the issue is padded out with a background feature on the costume design, a pleasant Introduction by Lynda Carter, from the late '70s Wonder Woman TV show, and lots of pinups of Diana in her classic costume. Some nice work there, though in between Adam Hughes, Perez and the like it would have been nice to see some less typical artists chosen.
Captain America: The 1940s Newspaper Strips #1 (of 3)
Writer/Artist - Karl Kesel
Publisher - Marvel Comics
This doesn't work for me at all. The premise for a faux, old-time Cap strip with simple, patriotic wartime tales is fine, but simple shouldn't be so boring. Rather than Cap and Bucky in intriguing, globe-spanning adventures a la Terry and the Pirates, Kesel seems to think readers want to see more of Private Steve Rogers peeling potatoes at Camp Lehigh instead of taking out Nazis. It doesn't even look like '40s strip work in any way, from the un-newspaperlike "two on two" panel layouts for the "dailies" (the "Sunday" strip is a full comics page, to the sophisticated coloring, to the contemporary, if lighthearted, drawing style. Thankfully, unlike real newspaper adventure strips, Kesel doesn't waste one of those four precious panels on a recap of what happened the day earlier, but even with covering more storytelling ground than the average '40s serial would in the same length of time, it really misses the mark.
Sea Bear & Grizzly Shark
Writer/Artists - Jason Howard & Ryan Ottley
Publisher - Image Comics
When creative people get together, especially during conventions, fun ideas often happen. It's just that once everyone gets back to their normal, paying work, sometimes those fun ideas never come to fruition, or sometimes they do and the results just don't live up to that can't-miss premise.
It's amusing that Robert Kirkman, Howard's and Ottley's writer on The Astounding Wolfman and Invincible, respectively, offers to write the explanation behind the switcheroos for these two animals, Kirkman does best finding fresh takes on well-worn genres like superheroes and zombies, rather than coming up with killer premises himself, and in fact the origin in his Introduction is labored and unnecessary.
Howard's "Sea Bear" is the better of the two efforts here. Though rough, his artwork is sturdier, and the mix of revenge story with secret society story works pretty well, although he tends to try to overcome any problems with the story by turning the volume up with lots of gratuitous gore. He draws it very well, but I would have preferred if he trusted in his weird ideas and fleshed them out a bit more.
Ottley's "Grizzly Shark" is played even more for laughs, and while that makes the more cartoonish style he uses here more appropriate than what he uses in Invincible, I didn't care for how it looked. I didn't find it funny, either. It would have been better at about half the size, and maybe in comic strip form. In fact, while the book is harmless enough, at $4.99 it's a bit expensive for 48 pages of black-and-white self-indulgence.
Bart Simpson #54
Writers/Artists - Peter Kuper, Carol Lay, Evan Dorkin, Sergio Aragones
Publisher - Bongo Comics
This issue features a talented group of professional cartoonists being, well…professional. The creators here mold their typical concerns into stories suitable for the world of The Simpsons and hopefully get a couple laughs out of them. Kuper (cofounder and coeditor of World War 3 Illustrated) explores his fears of our noisy, selfish, consumerist culture in a tale where a firecracker mishap leaves Bart looking like Chaplin's Little Tramp, with a visual nod to Modern Times. Credit Kuper for bringing a point of view, though it's out of character for Bart to recoil from this world. I also found Kuper's cameo gratuitous, but I can't say I wouldn't do the same if I had the chance.
Evan Dorkin is more on point with his Bart story, probably because Dorkin's work has always shown he still connects to his nerdy, pop culture obsessed youth. Here, Bart and Milhouse purchase a long-awaited video game only to end up destroying it when they can't open the packaging. Not top drawer Dorkin, but I wished there was more than just the couple pages.
Aragones manages to just do his thing, a silent one-pager about Maggie's daydream in a sandbox, and it's cute, off-model and totally Sergio. And Lay's story, a prank Bart plays on Lisa at a carnival, is about as gentle and whimsical as Aragones' but with more pages feels flabbier.
—Christopher Allen
June 2010
7 posts
Hulk #23
Writer - Jeph Loeb
Artists - Ed McGuinness, Sal Buscema, Ian Churchill, Mike Deodato, Tim Sale, John Romita, Jr., Herb Trimpe, Dale Keown, Leinil Francis Yu.
Publisher - Marvel Comics
It's bad critical practice to think about how someone else might think about a book, I guess. I should just worry about my own take on it. Still, I wonder how this issue would go over to, say, a younger Hulk reader who doesn't realize it features art from a number of past Hulk artists, some of whom have been part of important runs. Without that background, this probably looks like kind of a mess, though individually I enjoyed most of their efforts. Heck, in this context I just realized that Ian Churchill draws an interesting, very human Thunderbolt Ross, and I have never been a Churchill fan.
So, yes, the issue maybe works a little better for me because I'm happy that Sal Buscema and Herb Trimpe got some 2010 Marvel money. I couldn't really figure out what Trimpe did, but Buscema's work is nice. Still, I think it ultimately failed because it was an oversized issue that was nothing but exposition and flashbacks leading up to something that I didn't find all that earth-shaking when it was first revealed: Red Hulk is really General Ross, and now Loeb is going to fill in the missing details on why he would ever team up with villains The Leader and M.O.D.O.K. and subject himself to the Cathexis Ray to become a creature so like his bitterest enemy.
And, you know, it's not that hard to understand. Loeb, somewhat charmingly, really seems fond of Ross, giving him lengthy eulogies in his "funeral" issue when readers thought Red Hulk had murdered him (a Life Model Decoy, it turns out. Yawn.), and now giving him a youth as an air show biplane pilot, paralyzed in a crash and teaching himself how to walk again. Or maybe Peter David came up with this stuff, I don't know. But bottom line: Ross has decades of comics showing that he's a kook who will stop at nothing to capture/kill The Hulk, including creating monsters or arming himself in order to take him on. He has no ethics and no restraint; turning himself into Red Hulk isn't a surprise, and indeed the animosity Red Hulk had for Bruce Banner made Ross the most likely suspect. My only complaint is that I have to tell my kid that cool action figure he has is really an old man with a gray moustache.
So the issue is not just a collection of old flashbacks with Ross narration to try to let us in on his obsession, it also appears to be not so much a jam issue but the equivalent of a TV clip show. It looks like in at least some of the cases, the art may be from older comics with the narrative captions added. The Tim Sale art seems to be taken right from Hulk: Gray. Other than the admission that Ross was envious of The Hulk's power, there's not much here that really ennobles the man or even ties all his various acts together into a cohesive, dramatic whole. In fact, the time he seemed to die in the arms of daughter Betty looks like it was the right exit for him, so having him go on and touch on several more years of continuity is just an unfortunate reminder of how corporate comics work.
Superman #700
Writers - James Robinson, J. Michael Straczynski, Dan Jurgens
Artists - Bernard Chang, Eddy Barrows, Dan Jurgens
Publisher - DC Comics
It's my fault.
I have a soft spot for anniversary issues and despite decades of disappointment, more often than not, I expect that the standards will be higher than for a "regular" issue. The recent Batman #700, with Grant Morrison writing several connected stories for various artists, worked pretty well. It wasn't his best work but fairly successful, with good art, and it was satisfying by itself even if it tied into an ongoing storyline involving Bruce Wayne's resurrection.
So that's kind of what I was hoping for here. I guess I'm happy that the reunion scene I was expecting at the end of War of the Supermen ends up here. This issue marks the end of James Robinson's run as (co)writer of Superman-related books, and it makes sense that he gets to return things to status quo with lots of conversation between Clark and Lois about the various events that have happened while they were separated. Although Lois calling Clark, "Baby," multiple times was a little disconcerting, I liked the romance of it, even if some space was wasted with a pointless sequence with The Parasite chasing Lois before Superman shows up and gives him one of his fastest defeats. Bernard Chang's work is limp and just not good enough for this anniversary issue, but I suppose it's appropriate they let him finish his run as well. The limpness extends to the overall story, though, as Robinson is content with just the conversation and expressions of love and doesn't pull it into any sort of meaningful structure.
Curiously, the issue is padded not with pinups or anything like that, but rather an inconsequential story by Dan Jurgens that could have come from a drawer locked since 1990. It's a little thing about the Dick Grayson Robin defying instructions to stay home and do homework, instead going to stop an arms deal before Superman steps in to save him and then try to cover up his involvement so Dick doesn't get in trouble. It's cute, well-drawn and the most complete, entertaining story here. It's just not much of a Superman story, and doesn't have much reason to be here aside from the fact it eats up pages and Jurgens did some nice Superman stories 20 years ago.
JMS and Eddy Barrows start their run on the book here with a prequel story to the "Grounded" story Mark Waid quipped about last week. Although that was a great line, I don't think having Superman travel across the country to reconnect with the people whom he's sworn to protect is a bad premise at all. I think it's in taking it to that "Grounded" extreme of having him not use his powers that might take JMS into ludicrous territory. Superman has incredible powers. He needs them to protect these people. Pretending he doesn't have them is just denying who he is, and it's not going to help the people. Not much happens in this story aside from a nice scene where a woman blames Superman's absence for her husband dying of a brain tumor. If Superman was there he could have helped, and she wouldn't be a widow. Obviously Superman can't be everywhere, but he's the only one aside from The Flash who can come close, and naturally being the good soul he is, he's stung by the attack. It'll be interesting to see how Straczynski handles the hazards of the story.
—Christopher Allen
Andrew Goletz is a former Galaxy contributor and creative dynamo who asked if there was any way we could help him promote his newest project, and I'm more than happy to lend him some space here on TWC. Please read what he has to say, and consider lending him any support you can. — Alan David Doane
Most of you probably have no idea who the heck I am so why on Earth am I coming on this site, hat in hand, to ask you to help me out? I'll do my best to explain.
Years ago (I prefer to say 'years' instead of the real number which is well past a decade now because I already feel old) I and a number of people much more gifted with words worked for Alan by doing comic book reviews. It was back when comics cost about two dollars and we were mad about that, to give a little bit of perspective to the whole thing.
Alan and I went our own ways shortly after I launched the one column (along with co-writer and editor extraordinaire Glenn Greenberg) that people still talk about to this day: The Life of Reilly. The greatly expanded upon book version is coming, soon, I promise. One thing I believe Alan and I always shared was a fondness for discovering new talent and promoting them. Sure it's fun to comment on a great issue of Superman but there is a unique joy to finding a small press comic at your local comic con or checking out an indie that you heard about from a friend of a friend.
I've always wanted to write and publish comics. And even more than wanting to write and publish comics for the Big Two or Big Five was a desire to write and publish my own comics and help other people like me do the same. I'm finally almost in a position to do that.
With the help of talented friends made across the internet community I'm ready to launch the first issue of The Gathering. Volume 1: The Thing with Feathers is a 32 page black and white anthology with the central theme of 'Hope' in all its stories. There's the story of the baseball player yearning to make contact with the ball in his final at bat, a family man facing a cancer scare and a couple of super hero stories in there as well. A few of the contributors have had their work published before but for the most part this is a project done but creative people who've never had the resources to do this before and I am extremely happy to give them the opportunity to do so with this book.
But a funny thing happened on the way to making The Gathering. I had ideas for me. And as new teams were assembled for the beginnings of a second volume, more ideas began to present themselves. What about doing longer form stories: Seven pages? Sixteen pages? Full length comics? The potential was there and there are more than enough talented folks out there with ideas to share who want to help contribute to the book.
The problem is I'm not made of money, contrary to what my kids may believe. While the first issue was completely financed by myself (and at the printers as of this post) I don't have the ability to have two or three different books ready to goat a moment's notice. The solution to this is a great sight called Kickstarter which allows creative people to post their ideas and allow people to pledge to help fund the project of their choice.
Our goal is to raise 2500 dollars by the end of July. It's a lot of money but not an impossible goal. And yeah it does seem strange to be asking complete strangers to donate money in a tough economy to something that isn't going to change the world but I do believe in this project and the creators involved with it.
I want to be able to create something where new talent can come and tell a story if they want to without having to figure out how to self publish on their own or trying to pitch to a major company. I think we've done that with this first anthology and I'm certainly excited about the potential for the future, which is why the Kickstarter campaign is so important.
So if you have a few extra dollars to spare and want to help support an up and coming comic line intent on giving new creators a place to shine, please head on over and make a pledge. We also have a few rewards available there for those that do.
Looking for some variety in my already fairly diverse reading pile, last night I sat down with some Archies — specifically, Archie #608-609, and the new collection Archie New Look Series Vol. 4: My Father's Betrayal.
The floppy Archie issues comprise a two-part storyline about The Archies and Josie and the Pussycats getting together for a big tour. Each band hopes to expand their audience by exposing their music to fans of the other, and the members of each band also like each other's music and are enthusiastic about jamming together.
Of course, The Pussycats' scheming manager tries to pull a fast one and get his girls top billing, but that scheme quickly falls apart and the two bands embark on their tour. Along the way, Archie and Valerie collaborate on a new song and pretty convincingly fall in love. They decide it would be best to keep their nascent relationship secret for the sake of the tour and their bandmates' (especially Betty and Veronica) feelings, but over time pretty much everybody (with one funny exception) figures out what is going on.
I really enjoyed these two issues, for the fairly realistic way Archie and Valerie get together, and more importantly for how the racial aspect of their romance isn't even acknowledged, as if it's just normal and okay for these two young people to have the feelings they do, and act on them. Contrast that with the big deal being made out of the upcoming new gay character being introduced into Archie's universe — maybe in 25 or 50 years being gay in Archie's world will be no more noteworthy than a white guy and an African-American gal going out. One can hope.
I was quite amazed by how the story ends — when I say the relationship is convincing, I mean convincing. Even Betty and Veronica seem to get that this love affair is different than any Archie has had in the past, and there's a suggestion that it could be the real thing for both Archie and Valerie. It took at least a little bit of guts to go this far out on a limb with these characters, and of course the story might never be referenced again, but that would be a shame. I like the two of them together, and the possibilities for where their relationship could take them in the future.
My Father's Betrayal is one of the new-look (read: slightly less cartoony, slightly more complex narrative) Archie stories, this time focusing on Veronica and the gang discovering that her dad is tearing down a beloved old-growth forest to build a new industrial park. The story is somewhat preachy in its environmental concerns, but does acknowledge the new jobs Mr. Lodge believes his project will create. Going mostly unacknowledged is the fact that many industrial parks cause more problems than they solve. Still, Archie (the company) is to be saluted for tackling the subject at all, and the story is visually stunning, with art by the gifted team of Rich Burchett and Terry Austin.
Not worth saluting is another Archie publication I sat down with last night, Archie Americana Series: The Seventies Book Two, which collects a good cross-section of wacky '70s pieces featuring pet rocks and other '70s conceits. Archie (the publisher) has stripped the original creator credits from these stories (despite listing original issue numbers and release dates), and shame on them for doing so. I might have actually read the book and even recommended it, if they hadn't tried to hide the names of the actual human being who created the comics. Every other Archie I looked at had full creator credits, why not tell us who created these '70s stories? If they're good enough to be reprinted, surely their creators were and are worthy of being given credit for their creation.
— Alan David Doane
…I would have liked one as a kid. Anyway, after a couple weeks off on other projects like my actual job that pays my mortgage, I've got a little time to catch up on some floppies.
Predators #1 (of 4)
Writers - Marc Andreyko, David Lapham
Artists - Guilherme Balbi, Gabriel Guzman
Publisher - Dark Horse Comics
I wasn't really even aware they were rebooting the Predator film franchise until I saw this comic, which sports a terrific Paul Lee cover with great likenesses of Adrien Brody and Lawrence Fishburne. Kind of funny that two talented guys who could use a hit or at least need to keep working are kind of slumming by doing this sci-fi action movie, while two talented comics writers like Andreyko and Lapham are sort of doing the same thing with this miniseries, which, like most licensed comics movie tie-ins has stories that serve as a prequel or flesh out the film. It's not bad how they do it here, with Andreyko handling the longer main story, which spends time on a solider character whom we probably won't see much of if any in the movie, as he blacks out during a parachute dive and then comes to during his descent into the jungle, where he joins his squad being rapidly picked off by an unseen Predator or more, and then the badass Fishburne character shows up. The backup has Lapham fleshing out the character of the amoral, mercenary Brody character. The art by Balbi on the main story was just okay—if you squint at some panels you may get a bit of a Guy Davis feel—but Guzman is much more polished on the backup. Although I doubt we'll get top drawer Andreyko or Lapham here, I enjoyed it and probably look forward to the next issue a little more than the movie itself.
War of the Supermen #1-4
Writers - Sterling Gates, James Robinson
Artists - Jamal Igle, Eddy Barrows, Cafu, Eduardo Pansica, Various
Publisher - DC Comics
I only caught up to some of the New Krypton stories in the past month, and missed the setup for it. Still, aside from an interminable storyline involving Adam Strange that would have taken 10 pages in the '50s, it was fairly entertaining. Didn't really do a great job of world-building, and the class conflict stuff was dumbed down and abandoned to make way for this war story, but, well, what was I really expecting? I didn't dislike it.
This miniseries? Much dislike. This one is a real embarrassment. I wish I knew what happened to James Robinson, and is Sterling Gates a real person and why is he getting so much work? The basic story is crazed xenophobe (and Lois' dad), General Lane, destroys New Krypton, leaving thousands of pissed-off Kryptonians, led by equally crazed and xenophobic (though he has a point) General Zod coming to wage war on the people of Earth, leaving Superman and Supergirl in the middle.
Aside from, I think, Igle, who draws an okay Superman and can handle a decent fight scene, the artwork is almost always boring at best, hideous at worst, with Superman at his most anemic, expressionless and awkward, and the Kryptonian army having as much majesty and menace as UPS delivery people—just substitute gray for brown.
What's worse is that the writers just seem to be hitting their beats, and haphazardly at that, with no wit and often a seeming disregard for dramatic promise. There's a scene where an anguished Supergirl is hiding in floating planetary debris when Superman comes to find her. It's mostly silent, and so I guess a good deal of the blame for its failure is the bad drawing, but some dialogue between the two would have been nice. And what about the missed opportunities when Superman comes back? There's no Lois reunion scene. No conversation about how she's feeling since her dad has become this despicable war criminal and her sister is insane. Instead there's bad scenes like Lois and Jimmy drawn almost like federal agents, before it's revealed that they're just dumping exposition on Superboy, Steel and other supporting characters who don't really serve much purpose here. It's pretty much a complete botch.
Hawkeye & Mockingbird #1
Writer - Jim McCann
Artist - David Lopez & Alvaro Lopez
I was surprised to look closer and realize this is supposed to be an ongoing series. I'm not sure there's an audience, but whatever. The ups for this issue is that both McCann and the Lopez team convey a sense of fun right from the start. These two like fighting crime and are very comfortable with their gimmicks and corny costumes. I also like that the couple are part of a secret government group where they can be the stars, unlike the Avengers. And I like that Hawkeye's looking out for Mockingbird and that there's a secret between them that is causing problems.
My complaints are minor. I think after Ms. Marvel, Black Widow, Agent 13/Sharon Carter, Spider-Woman and I'm probably forgetting one or two, one more screwed up hot former S.H.I.E.L.D. with skeletons in her closet is pretty played out. As is one more covert government special ops outfit—wouldn't Norman Osborn have shut these things down? And also, not too down deep, I wonder if Hawkeye isn't more interesting without her. He's better mooning over someone else's girl. Not bad, though. You could do a lot worse.
—Christopher Allen
Over at The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon remembers legendary EC artist Al Williamson (updated obit with additional art).
Williamson was one of a few comics artists (along with Gil Kane and Steve Ditko) whose style really stood out for me as a very young comics reader; my eyes saw his work as being so far superior to most everything else being published that I very quickly learned his name and kept an eye out for anything he did. As a teenager I had the great good luck to be given Russ Cochran's EC Library hardcovers as a gift, and Williamson's greatest works were revealed unto me, along with his peers at EC like Wallace Wood and Bernie Krigstein.
With Williamson's passing, the great era of comics illustration is drawn even more to a close, but thankfully much of his work remains in print or accessible in one way or another. I can't recommend strongly enough that you seek out some of his work, if you want to know just how beautiful comics art can be.
— Alan David Doane
Wally Gropius
Writer/Artist - Tim Hensley
Publisher - Fantagraphics. $18.99 USD
Frequently mistaken for the famous Bauhaus architect, Wally Gropius is just your average umpteen millionaire looking for love, parental approval and a good jam with his band, The Dropouts. Has he finally found a honey in Jillian Banks, a gold-throated teen warbler of national anthems? And does it mean anything if he does or doesn't?
In an age when Hensley contemporary (and patron) Daniel Clowes is derided for the surface elements of a challenging work of great feeling beneath that surface, Hensley's debut graphic novel may find few champions. It's pretty much all surface, as far as I can tell. That's not a condemnation, but Gropius is more concerned with verbal jazz and abstract gags, all presented in an innocent-looking approximation of the bright, clean style of '60s Harvey Comics. Wally is a teen version of Richie Rich, growing up with lots of money and therefore mostly apathetic to it. a funny running gag is all the sound effects being names for money or people associated with wealth: kopeck, loot, ka-ching, Trump. It's also funny to see, say, a sports arena scoreboard with Summer's Eve douche as a sponsor.
Those are basically entry-level Hensley. He takes his darkly humorous instincts to extremes in other pages, such as the typical teen comic arguing between fusty father and rebellious daughter that suddenly turns incestuous, or the wacky setup of Wally's mom talking about fortunes being read with animal entrails before she shoots down a bird, its guts hanging out as a grotesque anti-punchline.
As is the case about 75% of the time, "graphic novel" here is a euphemism. This is a collection of strips, one to six pages, but they do tell a more or less linear, if disjointed, story of Wally's wooing of Jillian and the trouble it causes. Many of the stories were originally published in the Fantagraphics anthology, Mome, and it's arguable whether a story like "Shh!" is improved by the knowledge that some of its seeming non-sequiturs now make sense in the expansion. A story like that was a near-perfect, inscrutable gem, now scrutable. I'm not sure I'm better served by reading this interview with Hensley by Gary Groth where several of the jokes are explained, not to mention finding out Hensley is no wunderkind but a 44 year old man who's been making comics for years and who seems to have come to this Harvey style fairly recently. I think the way to approach the book is as a lavish, frequently funny, if superficial, joke. Not unlike R. Sikoryak's Masterpiece Comics. Your mileage may vary as to whether there's a sense of diminishing returns by having all this work under one cover. I enjoyed it but didn't feel like I had to read it in one sitting. It's not a work seeking any great truth; Hensley just wants to entertain, though his humor is going to be over a lot of folks' heads, and if you have to explain a joke, it's already failed. I liked enough of the gags, and Hensley's overall confidence in putting them over in such a currently declasse' comics art style, that I would recommend it.
—Christopher Allen
Really looking forward to this one, and regretting selling off my original issues of the Alan Moore/Steve Bissette/John Totleben run all those years ago…Steve Bissette has posted details about the book on his blog.
— Alan David Doane
May 2010
29 posts
Boy, it's been a while since I participated here at TWC, hasn't it? I will offer no excuses, but I do have a plan of action. Once in a while, I dig into the Vast Bacardi Archives (sekrit location: my old bedroom closet at my Mom's) and pull out a run of something I haven't read in a long time. I thought to myself "Self, you could write about these rereadings on TWC, and continue to justify having your name on the sidebar roll!" So here's the first of what I hope will be more than a few looks back at comics from back in the day, as the homies say.
Recently, I developed a yen to read a series that I enjoyed quite a bit when it was coming out, but haven't read since: the Paul Jenkins/Jae Lee Inhumans series that came out under the Marvel Knights banner back in the dim and distant days of 1998-1999.
I'm not exactly sure of the backstory behind this series; I do know Daredevil and Garth's Punisher were going strong under this imprint, and I'm sure the thinking was to present a more down-to-earth look at the characters. Paul Jenkins, if memory serves, had been at Marvel a short while after a run at Vertigo on Hellblazer; I don't know for sure what artist Lee had been doing prior; I'd guess some X-book or another. Regardless, Jenkins crafted a darker take, and Lee's art is nothing if not dark…so one was compelled to read this under a very bright light if possible.
Jenkins didn't exactly reinvent the wheel here; usually when you're writing about the Inhumans, and this goes all the way back to the Kirby/Lee days, the default tendency is to feature at least two standard points of departure: a scheme to take over the throne of Attilan from the Inhuman's king, Black Bolt, by his deranged brother Maximus (helpfully nicknamed "The Mad"), and/or the effects of the Inhuman-altering Terragen mists, which every subject subjects themselves to at a certain age, kinda like a bar/bas mitzvah, with the result being your appearance gets freaky and you gain powers, instead of just settling for just today being a man or woman. Mazel tov! Anyway, Jenkins uses both approaches, and introduces a third wild card- an previously-unheard-of attack on the super-domed "Great Refuge" that the 'Humans call home by the outside world, in this case those sneaky Russians…but Jenkins postulates, quite correctly I'd think, that there would be little help coming from the UN simply because most of the world doesn't know what or who the hell they are living there in that dome, with all those freaky powers, and nothing but the word of the Fantastic Four and other superpeople that they meant no harm. Interesting idea there, I thought. And Lee's moody art, all pensive poses and 3/4-shadow faces, ramps up the paranoia and tension.
We're introduced to a group of young Inhumans early on; all teens, all anticipating the day when they will enter the mists and realize their potential. For some of them, it turns out well. But for one fellow, named "Woz", not so much- he seems to regress and become one of the subhuman worker caste called the Alpha Primitives, who toil and labor for the "greater good" under the Great Refuge. After much discussion, Woz is exiled to live with the Primitives…but there's more than meets the eye with him. Turns out he does have powers, which didn't manifest themselves in an obvious fashion- he can travel in a dimension between reflective surfaces, enabling him to enter any room with a mirror- including the cell of Maximus. Of course, Max knows about him and uses him to get out surreptitiously, working on a deal with the Russians to help him overthrow Black Bolt and take his revenge.
As the attack from the human troops begin, Black Bolt, through mouthpiece/gal pal/queen Medusa, begs the citizens to not take any action, fearing the cost to his people as well as the potential for mass human murder and the shitstorm it would bring down on their heads. But even his loyal family- Crystal, Gorgon, Triton, Karnak (sporting wicked head tats- we even get an interlude with his tattoo artist in one issue)- are doubting this course of action, and tensions escalate when cracks appear in the dome from the bombardment, and trouble from within as Maximus makes his play at the worst possible time. He's got a plan, Black Bolt does, he always does…but it sure looks doubtful this time, and things look very bleak for the Royal Family.
I don't want to spoil how this all turns out, and there are a few more surprises the deeper it gets; I was pleasantly surprised at how caught up in all the machinations I got, even though I had a pretty good idea how it turned out. Jenkins does a nice job with characterization- stolid Black Bolt, gruff and hotheaded Gorgon, cool and calculating Karnak, loyal Triton as well as a lot of time spent in interludes with the "regular" folk of the Great Refuge, Black Bolt's subjects, even extending to the Alpha Primitives. The human characters aren't treated broadly and are given some depth as well. The longish format of the series allowed Jenkins a couple of WWII-flavored digressions; one features the young Triton and his encounter with an old man and his grandson on a ship which gets attacked by Nazis- it winds up being quite touching at the end- and he also takes the opportunity, closer to the finale of the series, to work in the decision Churchill made towards the end of the War that cost thousands of lives, and draws a parallel from that to the strategy Black Bolt employs to deal with his own crisis. Pretty heady stuff, I'd say. That said, sometimes Jenkins would lapse into a ponderous and even pretentious, sometimes, narration style, making some of the scenes drag a bit more than they should. All in all, I thought he did a nice job of taking the Inhumans lore up to that point, and put a subtle twist on it, as well as introducing a few ideas of his own to the mix. Of course, he also had a sympathetic collaborator in Lee, who, despite the occasional awkward, stiff pose and inappropriate facial expression, delivered the mood and atmosphere in spades, as well as some imaginative character design tweaks.
I also look on this series fondly, since it introduced one of my favorite Marvel characters: Yelena Belova, aka Black Widow II, who is brought in early on to do a little espionage that aids the Russian plan. Not long after, she made her solo debut in the first Black Widow miniseries, written by Devin Grayson with art by J.G. Jones (Natasha Romanoff, the established Widow, was included). Unfortunately, not many people shared my enthusiasm for the character, and she was eventually dispatched in humiliating fashion by Brian Bendis, although Andy Diggle brought her back, in a way, in his Thunderbolts run.
There's a trade collection still available, although I don't think it's in print anymore.
— Johnny Bacardi
Hey Princess
Writer/Artist - Mats Johnsson. Publisher - Top Shelf Comix $14.95 USD
I like a fat little book with a couple making out on fallen leaves. That's a good start right there. It's not like I can read SuperF*ckers in a waiting room or Starbucks.
I think for many writers and artists, there's a relation between sex and productivity. For some, the lack of sex, and the frustration over that fact, can often fuel long stretches of intense, sustained creative effort. For others, a satisfying love life can obviate the need to express oneself creatively.
I think there's a sort of middle period, too, where one is finding sexual success with a different partner or two, and a combination of love and ego and adrenaline fuels creative efforts that often dwell on one's exploits. I remember being in an odd sort of love rectangle with my best friend at the time and two other women (years ago) and it was all so exciting and heartbreaking and stressful I started writing a novel about it before the events had even come to any sort of conclusion. At the time, events like drinking rum and Coke in a Big Gulp cup outside a 7-11, or the girl squatting and peeing in front of me in the parking lot outside a Morrissey concert, took on dramatic significance that seemed to need chronicling, even if those events seem rather mundane and tacky now.
I get a lot of that feeling from Hey Princess. It's not that Johnsson was creating the cartoons as they were happening—it's clear there was a distance of a few years—but it's still soon enough that the cartoons feel like he's not far removed from the events and perhaps not quite able to put them into perspective, or to frame them for maximum dramatic impact. There's a good deal of similarity to Jeffery Brown's work, in that most of the stories involve Johsson pining for a girl. However, unlike Brown, Jonsson seems more willing to poke fun at himself and his trendiness, even if there is probably an element of pride that he was so stylish, and certainly his style helped him land some of these women.
The book is touted as a graphic novel, but like Brown's work, it's more of a collection of stories comprising a sequential chunk of the creator's life. The period here is Jonsson getting out of college, starting work at a pop music magazine, and finding time to see a lot of European music festivals (probably in part for his job, though it's not clear) and bouncing between a few women who excite and frustrate him in differnet ways. There's a nice, untidy feeling of reality here—if this was a movie, say, you'd want to compress the women into one woman, but occasionally in a man's life there are times of plenty that encourages ficklessness and vacillating. To his credit, Jonsson doesn't romanticize himself or the women, and the sex act, while depicted frequently, always looks pretty awkward. On the other hand, I'm not sure he has the artistic skill to make it look otherwise. In a book about nervousness and people chatting, drinking, and fucking, Jonsson's amateurish style works just fine. If needed to convey beauty or pain, or when anything beyond a matter-of-fact narrative is required, he would come up short. It's not a great book, but anyone on either side of the Atlantic who's been young, drunk, horny and swooning can find some familiar moments with which they can relate.
—Christopher Allen
DC Universe Legacies #1 (of 10)
Writer - Len Wein. Pencilers - Andy Kubert, Scott Kolins, J.G. Jones. Inkers - Joe Kubert, J. G. Jones. DC Comics.
I suppose one could write a couple thousand worlds about the appeal of writing Golden Age heroes. Let's just skip that and say they're colorful but uncomplicated, and so they're very suitable for a stand-alone story like this one. After a two-page framing device drawn by Kolins that I'm guessing was a late addition by a nervous editor, we're back in the '40s, with two young street kids trying to make a buck. One, Paul, isn't very happy about his petty crimes, while the other has no qualms. Seeing Crimson Avenger, Sandman and the Atom bust up their bosses endeavors eventually wakes Paul up. Wein's script is competent, but who was looking for one more story where a delinquent is set on the right path by the well-timed interest of a superhero? It would have been intriguing if we had a peek at young Atom or Sandman perhaps not so confident, at least about dispensing advice to children not much younger than them.
The charm here comes primarily from the father and son Kubert team on the art. There's your legacy right there. There's also a backup with Jones on art—not sure when I've ever seen him do something so…small? He does a pretty nice job with the period details but it's hardly a story—a reporter recounts a case of The Spectre and some bits about other heroes, all of whom he thinks are frauds. I'm guessing there will be more stories where this guy comes to change his mind on that, which is fine, but I wish they'd just started with an actual story. Hey, d'ya think the fact this is a 10 and not 12 issue miniseries has something to do with the economy? I'm sure, given the choice, Wein could squeeze out another pair of issues, right?
Garrison #1
Writer - Jeff Mariott. Artist - Francesco Francavilla. Wildstorm Comics
Mariotte's best-known work is probably his series of Desperadoes Western comics, so it makes sense that he brings a bit of mysterious stranger cowboy flare to this modern book. I suppose you'd call it an espionage book, but there's not a lot of that going on yet. Garrison is a snake-tattooed, Stetson-wearing serial killer, dropping somewhere around 150 stiffs in the past nine weeks. N.B.S. (National Bureau of Surveillance) analyst Jillian has been studying him from security camera videos but doesn't have any answers. She begins sharing what little she knows with a H.I.A. (Homeland Intelligence Agency) agent who was secretly her boyfriend, when who shows up outside headquarters but Garrison, who kills the agent and tells Jillian the guy would have killed her in a few weeks. Obviously there's some sort of conspiracy behind this, and Garrison doesn't seem like such a bad guy besides all the murdering, and there are hints later on that he may not be acting completely on his own volition. A decent start, though I have to say Francavilla's work is really dull. He doesn't do anything wrong as far as anatomy, perspective, etc., but this would be a case where one would prefer a more flawed but also much more distinctive stylist.
Zatanna #1
Writer - Paul Dini. Penciler - Stephane Roux. Inker - Karl Story. DC Comics.
Presumably, the writer of a series starring a decades-old second-or-third-string superhero character does their best to make their version commercially viable and creatively fresh. But if it doesn't work out, well, what's the big deal? Eventually there will be another attempt, since the trademark has to be serviced, and with a well-known, acclaimed writer like Dini, he can always move onto another project.
Still, it is nice when everyone's trying. Perhaps due in part to his wife being a professional magician, Dini has long had an interest in Zatanna, and as not many others have, he's emerged as her primary chronicler in the past decade.
This issue begins a story arc where Zatanna is called to assist the police (specifically a handsome young detective who will likely provide romantic interest later) with the investigation of several murders that resulted in people being turned into giant frogs, pigs and such. In addition to her charmingly silly deus ex machina of her every wish coming true if she speaks the words backwards, she apparently also can see people's memories if she puts her hands on their ears and, I guess, suck them out of their brains. This puts them on the trail of San Francisco underworld (the mystical kind) boss Brother Night. With magic at one's service, who needs strategy, so she just goes and confronts him and tells him to leave humans alone, dispatching his creepy helpers in the process. He gets irritated and goes off to appeal to another evil type for help.
Dini's wit is sparing here, and the plotting very basic. I did like Brother Night's underlings, especially the cloaked on, Romalthi, with the blank white mask that changes to the shape of whatever animal she's changing you into. There's a lot of visual zing to that gimmick. As far as characterization, Zatanna is a little bland here. Grant Morrison got a good deal more out of her in his Seven Soldiers-related miniseries, where Zatanna was a mentor to a teenage witch. There aren't many scenes with the detective or anyone else to help fill in what she's about.
I'm not familiar with Roux's work, but as you can see here, his Adam Hughesian creamy contours are a good fit for a book with a comely female lead. There's an awkward panel or two, but he does alternate angles and try to keep the page compositions interesting if not innovative.
—Christopher Allen
Quick looks at a few first issues of team books from this week and last.
Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #1
Writer - Warren Ellis. Artist - Kaare Andrews. Marvel Comics.
There are a couple nice things going on in this miniseries. First, Ellis does a good job grounding the X-Men in our heartbreaking world, in this case dropping some depressing African recent history. At the same time, he brings the strange with the X-Men's mission, which is to investigate a run of supposed mutant births in a small, fictional African country. The reports of some of the weird births set up that Andrews may have some cool things to draw next issue.
Where the book doesn't work as well is, well, the choice of Andrews. Actually, put me down as undecided for now. Let's just say that if Ellis is going to make any kind of statement on Africa, or poverty, or children with special needs or any serious issue that could spring up, then Andrews' exaggerated, kinky style will really clash and undermine the story. If, now that the facts have been relayed, we're heading into fairly typical superhero terrain, then sure, I'm down for all the innuendos about Scott being turned on by Emma's fake British accent, Emma smashing her breasts on the table for Wolverine's benefit, and whatever else Ellis and Andrews cook up. It's a miniseries, go nuts.
Avengers (v4) #1
Writer - Brian Michael Bendis. Pencils - John Romita, Jr. Inks - Klaus Janson. Marvel Comics.
This relaunch succeeded and disappointed in ways I wasn't expecting. Bendis is more admired for his dialogue than plotting, but I thought this was pretty flat. Aside from some characters like Hawkeye developing that Bendis stammer, no one is written out of character, per se, but there aren't any juicy exchanges, either. Steve Rogers has decided that Tony Stark/Iron Man needs to be an Avenger again, and so he's burying the hatchet, and leaving the day-to-day to Maria Hill. Two people he's had major issues with in the recent past. Sure, it says something about Rogers' character, but it also reduces the dramatic opportunities here. In fact, the issue really reeks of wanting to forget about the last few years and just get onto being a big superteam book again, with everyone working together. A change in tone and an attempt at a fresh start for new or returning readers are both sensible, but it still feels abrupt. Hawkeye is Hawkeye again, casting aside the Ronin guise as the gimmick it was with a self-conscious exchange with Spider-Man about the sudden shift. Speaking of Spider-Man, as Bendis has shown an affinity for writing him before, I confess I just don't get why he chooses to just make him the comic relief here, with a really annoying compulsion to make a "humorous" comment every minute. I get that he's not as powerful as some of the heroes here (though more powerful than Hawkeye, Rogers or Spider-Woman), but shouldn't he instead be played as the never-give-up guy? Especially with Rogers stepping aside to run the Secret Avengers, Spidey should be the heart of this team.
I really don't tire of the combination of Romita, Jr. and Janson. Always good.
Legion of Super-Heroes (v6) #1
Writer - Paul Levitz. Penciler - Yildiray Cinar. Inker - Wayne Faucher. DC Comics.
The first LOSH story I read was Levitz and Giffen's "Great Darkness Saga," and I liked it, but over the years I've only been a sporadic reader and never lasted all that long. It's kind of interesting after a big chunk of my comics-reading life to be considering Levitz as just another freelance writer rather than as the frustrating guy running DC Comics.
While Cinar is serviceable, I really think this book needs someone more exciting and distinctive for it to have a chance, especially when Levitz' writing is decidedly old school. That's not such a bad thing, as he packs a lot of story in this double-sized issue, with nary a full-page spread, and he makes decent use of declasse' thought balloons as well as the convenient little floating boxes that identify the various Legionnaires by codename, real name, home planet and superpower(s). At the same time, nobody stands out here but Saturn Girl, who was just settling in for a good tantrum over her jerk husband when her planet is attacked and twin sons kidnapped. You'd be a sympathetic character if either of these things happened to you. I can't say there's a whole lot to hook me here, but I may give it another issue or two.
—Christopher Allen
I got suckered in to buying a copy of Avengers #1, I'm not entirely certain how, but a few pages into the thing I was already taken out of the book. Steve Rogers is putting together his new team of heroes and he's telling them all of the qualities and virtues that they exhibit; "…nobility and strength", "cunning and bravery", "power and responsibility", "ruthlessness and…"
At which point, alarm bells went off in my head. Ruthlessness? You mean, like having no compassion or pity? I thought these were supposed to be the good guys again? I guess, you could consider Wolverine to be ruthless, but what about the whole "bright and shiny" new "Heroic Age"?
It's not as funny as when reading Bendis' script in an issue of Powers so long ago, featuring a lawyer objecting due to "heresy", but it's still odd.
— d. emerson eddy
As Dan Clowes has matured as a cartoonist, his storytelling has undergone a fascinating inversion. In his earlier serialized works such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and Ghost World, the reader could take the events presented for exactly what they were. As baroque or surreal as Clowes might present the events in the lives of his characters, the reader could be reasonably certain, within the parameters of any given story, we were being played fair with and seeing things play out in a fairly direct manner.
Beginning with David Boring, Clowes began moving in a very different direction. Having abandoned the sort of comics essays that were liberally sprinkled through most of Eightball's run (perhaps the most notorious being "On Sports"), the cartoonist began telling stories not by the events that are depicted, so much, as by what is left out. Clowes scholar Ken Parille's examination of David Boring (in Comic Art #7, 2005) shows most clearly just how much is going on in that particular story, events and developments that are hidden from the reader's direct view and only revealed by looking sideways at the story as presented. This technique is a common element in the films of David Lynch, and at times (Like a Velvet Glove and David Boring) Clowes's work resembles Lynch's more than it does any cartoonist one could name.
Clowes further developed and refined this mode of storytelling (one
he shares to one degree or another with at least two of his peers, Chris Ware and Gilbert Hernandez) in his two longform works immediately prior to Wilson, Ice Haven (originally published in Eightball #22 and then expanded for the graphic novel release) and The Death Ray (Eightball #23). Ice Haven was perhaps the most joyous and thrilling of the two works, Clowes for the first time using multiple cartoon stylings (as he does in Wilson) to depict different points of view within the greater cohesive narrative. The Death Ray also held back more than it told, to wildly successful effect, and if anything, Wilson feels like a summation of everything Clowes learned while creating Ice Haven and The Death Ray.
Like The Death Ray, Wilson focuses on a single misanthropic character, the titular Wilson. He's the turd in the punchbowl of daily life for anyone unlucky enough to encounter him on the street, at the coffee shop or waiting at the bus station. He reaches out to virtually everyone he meets, making conversation and trying to bridge the conversational gap, but he is such a mass of neuroses and outright hatred for humanity that no encounter with him will ever be remembered as anything other than a low-level waking nightmare.
Each page of Wilson is a single story with its own title, and the first dozen or two are spent on such face-to-face encounters, often with a humourous and/or mortifying "punchline." As we immerse deeper into Wilson's world, though, Clowes gets to the heart of the matter, an agonizing adventure of domestic disaster as Wilson tries to transform the mistakes of his past into a family, or at least a big payday (as with many elements of the story, Wilson's motives and end goals are not entirely clear, leaving the reader to interpret the many clues dropped along the way). Along the way we are treated to a number of character studies, including Wilson's ex-wife, his child, and of course Wilson himself.
I don't see the oblique approach to the material as anything other than a strength. Clowes is such a powerful storyteller that there's no doubt he knows exactly what the events are that transpire between the panels, between the pages here. I prefer this technique over that in earlier Clowes stories, where little of importance is left to the imagination. By the end of Wilson, we have learned an enormous amount of information about Wilson the man, and yet are left to wonder volumes about Wilson the life.
I've often said the very best comics resonate with the feeling of having experienced something of the inner life of another person, and certainly Wilson is among that number. I don't think it's very likely you'll like Wilson much by the end of the story, but as with so many real people in our everyday lives, we learn thousands of facts but are left adrift at sea when it comes to whether we really know what he was like as a person, whether he was as bad as his worst moments suggest, or if he had the potential to be so much more, as suggested in the final moments we spend with him.
In Wilson, Clowes has created yet another mankind-hating misanthrope for us to laugh at and feel superior to, but unlike many previous models created from the same template, we are allowed to wonder what we miss by not seeing every moment of his life. We are allowed to see him as a human being, weak and despicable, loathsome and arrogant, but with aspirations to be better, to be more. The older Clowes gets, the more humanity seems to infuse his characters; the more real they become, and the more valuable, and the more memorable. No one in Wilson's world is likely to remember him, but we will.
Siege #4, Avengers: The Initiative #35, Dark Avengers #16, The New Avengers Finale #1.
Writers - Brian Michael Bendis, Christos Gage
Artists - Bryan Hitch, Stuart Immonen, Mike Deodato, Olivier Coipel, Jorge Molina, Others.
After basically ignoring most Marvel series the past few years (getting a few in collections such as Captain America and, more recently, Agents of Atlas), Siege was a way for me to catch up at the tail-end of the Norman Osborn Era, and see what Bendis and the other writers were doing. I didn't care for the plotting of issue #1 and thought Coipel's art was less than dynamic, but the story picked up a bit with the revelation that The Sentry was possessed by his arch-nemesis (or other side of the coin), The Void. It wasn't all that much of a revelation, as aside from having Sentry sleep with several superheroines I don't think much effort was made to give him other enemies. He was Osborn's high-powered stooge, and so it was inevitable he go down and go down hard. I mainly just liked how The Void was depicted as an evil crab.
I think Bendis is generally best with scenes of characters relating to each other without a whole lot at stake and not many plot points to hit. Siege is about clearing away what, in the chunk of Avengers back issues I read, seemed to be a pretty fruitful period. Crazy villain in charge of the military, with supervillains disguised as heroes while the real heroes are hunted and have to work off the grid—that's pretty good stuff. Sprinkle in conflicts between old friends like Captain America and Iron Man and the more relatable concerns of bringing a baby into a crazy world (Luke Cage and Jessica Jones) and some kooky, larger-than-life romance (The Hood and Madame Masque), and there's quite a bit of string to play out.
Cutting those strings and getting back to the status quo of reasonable government and superheroes free to trash property and endanger civilian lives with the full support of those civilians is not where Bendis' strengths are, so the miniseries had little momentum. Were there many of you out there who bought Siege #4 with breathless excitement? You knew the basics of what was going to happen. Bendis and Coipel get to the finish line with some nice if unspectacular moments, and lots of heroes standing around watching almost as passively as the reader. Volstagg fapping Osborn with the side of his sword isn't worth $16.
Avengers: The Initiative #35 has to be a little bittersweet for Christos Gage, as the issue gives a lot of room to wrapping up Siege plot threads like the end of the Diamondback/Constrictor romance, as she smartly plays on her past with Captain America to get a pardon, intending to get Constrictor the same deal, but looking on from above, he just thinks she's dumped him and makes his escape, heartbroken but resigned to a life of crime. I didn't think I'd ever write anything like that about perennial third-stringer Constrictor, so points for the effort. The parts of the book that feature the regular cast are less interesting. I'll give the rapprochement of two characters a pass because I wasn't around for their romance and breakup in the first place, but the scenes involving Justice and others blathering about keeping the superhero school dream alive don't have anything fresh to them. I will give Avengers Academy a try, though, since there Gage will have a much better artist in Mike McKone.
The New Avengers Finale is a bit of an oddity. I suppose they did a one-shot instead of a final issue of the regular series since New Avengers is relaunching next month, though I'm not sure putting a one-shot between the series makes that less confusing. The first thing that stands out to me is that after about a decade of pretty good choices in projects, Hitch has made two choices in a row (including Captain America: Reborn) that seem superfluous and uninspired, building off the monthly work of others.
Right from the cover, one of the more timid pieces I've seen from Hitch, we know we're not in for anything close to his best. He shares pencil duties with Stuart Immonen, but I'm guessing both were doing something closer to breakdowns on some pages, with Butch Guice's (credited as main inker here, with Andrew Currie and Karl Story backing him up) rougher style seeming to win out in most panels. I like Immonen and Guice fine, just don't expect this to look a whole lot like Hitch.
Bendis seems to have cranked out this script without much thought and little editing, as there are some silly errors. Oddly enough, the main story, which finds the Avengers team of Captain America (Bucky), Ronin, Mockingbird, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, Spider-Man, Cage and Wolverine on the trail of Masque and Hood. As Hood lost his powers, I'm not sure why they need so many Avengers, but whatever. The lovers on the lam seek help from Masque's dad, Count Nefaria, who gets a funny line that shows his greed winning out over his paternal instincts, and it's funny that, like most dads, he's disappointed in his daughter's choice of boyfriend and thinks she can do better. Hood wants Nefaria to re-power him and Nefaria is going to soak him for all his money to make that happen. The Avengers show up before that happens and that's pretty much it for the story, aside from making clear that the good guys are the good guys again. The story has no complications and didn't need to be double-sized at all. For some reason, I feel kind of protective of the old villains who don't get around much anymore. You sort of want this to be Nefaria's Crazy Heart, but no, he just really gets his ass kicked, sliced and fried. Any of these Avengers could have taken him solo, but instead they take turns. Poor bastard.
Dark Avengers #16 finishes off that book, and it's the best of the lot. I like the dusty, sun-bleached look of Deodato's art, plus there's more new story here, even if it's mostly setting up the new Avengers books. Daken escapes in a fun scene that doesn't soft pedal what a cold-blooded killer he is. Bendis refuses to kill darling Victoria Hand, or at least let her rot in jail. Instead, Steve Rogers sees something in her and puts her on his team, which is just crazy enough to work, or else it's just going to lead to stories with a character who should have gotten off the stage. We'll see. I did really hate Deodato's depiction of Osborn, which now isn't just Photoshopped Tommy Lee Jones but is now some weird computer modeling that looks more like a Gerry Andersen Thunderbird. That wasn't a good way to end the book.
As far as the new Avengers books look, I have to think Bendis has some other members in mind besides the ones we've see in the promotions. Besides Bucky and Luke Cage, all the others have at least one solo and/or team book guiding their fates. That doesn't give Bendis a lot of room to operate. I would guess he's got some other reclamation projects in mind.
—Christopher Allen
I confess to having a large zone of ignorance when it comes to some superhero comic books. I have, if you will, a Phantom Zone of knowledge but a Negative Zone of ignorance.
Oh I know who Jason Blood, Kent Nelson and Chuck Taine are (they are The Demon, Doctor Fate and Bouncing Boy).
But like a Democrat (or Republican) who only looks at one party and does not care what the other side has to say, I have very little knowledge of the heroics of the Marvel Universe. So when I say that I love comic books, I'm mostly a DC Comics kind of guy.
Which is like saying I love ice cream when I really only eat Mint Chocolate Chip.
Or I love chocolate bars, but it's really only Snickers or Kit Kats that I nibble upon.
Or I watch movies, but only comedies, and only if they're comedies starring former cast members of Saturday Night Live.
Years ago I read Uncanny X-Men, Daredevil and Thor, but I dropped the latter two books when Frank Miller and Walt Simonson left, and I gave up on the X-Men once the spin-offs and multiple crossovers became overwhelming, overly complicated and over expensive.
So while I know that Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel tied the knot in Superboy #200 and their un-intentional offspring was The New X-Men, I am usually just a passing visitor in the Marvel Universe, a mere tourist in the land of Lee, Kirby and Ditko.
But just like a steak-lover might hear that some vegetables are quite tasty (I especially enjoy garlic mashed potatoes and sautéed mushrooms) I am not completely resistant to Marvel books.
Ed Brubaker's Captain America and Daredevil have caught my interest. And I had also heard that the work Brubaker did with Matt Fraction on Iron Fist was a lot of fun. So with all of those books I took a deep, deep plunge and bought the big-ass doorstopper Omnibus Editions. All I ask in exchange for my hard-earned money is that the book be self-contained and not make me feel as if I'm missing something because of my refusal to buy every Marvel comic book on the stands.
Which brings me to the nineteen issue, not quite Omnibus-length Invincible Iron Man Vol. 1 by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca.
As I said in my review of "Iron Man 2", it's the movies that have served as my main introduction to the characters. I've never read the original Jack Kirby illustrated tales and, while I know of Tony Stark's battle with alcohol, I don't know any of the villains, supporting characters or their stories outside of what I learned from the films.
So, from the perspective of someone with slightly more Marvel knowledge than a tabula rasa-esque customer who wanders into a bookstore, how well does Fraction & Larroca's Invincible Iron Man work?
To the series' (and collection's) credit, the first storyline in the book, "The Five Nightmares" does a fantastic job of dropping us into the middle of Tony's world without forcing a lot of complicated exposition upon the reader.
The story opens as an unknown narrator describes how technology is now so prevalent and commonplace that people in an African city own more cell phones than they do landlines. And after that fact is established we are then shown a new, horrific technology as terrorists destroy that same city.
The story then jumps to Tony Stark who is rich, good-looking and likes the ladies (and therefore very familiar to readers who only know him from the movies). Stark is revealed to be the narrator of the story.
But he's not just Tony Stark: rich industrialist and part-time superhero who makes all the girls swoon. He is also the current director of a well-funded superspy government agency.
In one brilliant caption, Fraction tells the reader everything they need to know about the story: "My day job as director of S.H.I.E.L.D. plays hell on my sex life."
And it's within the first six pages of the story that all of the relevant information is delivered: technology, terrorism, high-tech government agents and a narrator who fears his own flaws and the tools of destruction that he has given to the world. Fraction manages to deliver everything a new reader might need in order to be up to speed, but does it in such a quick and efficient manner that regular readers would probably just brush over it without noticing that the creators are every so slightly pandering to the newbies.
And, as I said, he does it all in the first six pages.
Fraction is more than ably assisted by artist Salvador Larroca. His artwork is perfect for the book's mechanical majesty. The technological elements of the story are beautiful like an iPod: smooth, sleek and coupled with a friendly sci-fi feel. From the depiction of the world as Tony sees it while he's wearing his armor to the malevolence of the terrorists, Larroca gives it a futuristic look that puts most movies to shame.
Major credit for the artwork in the book also has to go the colorists, Stephane Peru (who passed away after doing work on the first two issues) and Frank D'Armata. The aerial views as Tony flies, the various battle scenes and even the Iron Man armor itself are vivid and spectacular. If it's Larroca's visuals that give it the look of a science fiction film, it's the colorist's work that makes it all come to life.
The first seven chapters of the volume comprise the first story. Tony has to track down a dead villain's son (not that the father-son relationship is too important to the story) and stop him from using old Iron Man technology for terrorism. The story is quick-paced and intense and, as Tony says, "Everything down there is changing. And we're up here, playing by the same rules."
The last section of the book has the storyline entitled "World's Most Wanted". And because I expect a book like this to be at least somewhat self-contained, there a lot of problems with the last two-thirds of this volume.
Far from the sleek 'gently nudge you into the deep end of the pool' storytelling of the first story, the reader is given a jarring shove into the new story with a page that states "PREVIOUSLY: The shape-shifting aliens know as Skrulls infiltrated all aspects of human life and planted a destructive virus in Stark technology…"
Excuse me, but what the F&*K is all that about?
Alien invasion, Skrulls, Norman Osborn, Thunderbolts, H.A.M.M.E.R. – what the hell does this have to do with the story I just read?
Imagine reading a sentence about the incredible essential don't dare miss it significance of !BLANK! and everything changes because of it: it's like an old-fashioned record that skips over a section of a song, or like when your cellphone suddenly drops service and you can't help but wonder if the part you missed was really important or you can just move on without it.
To be brutally blunt, it is insulting to have seven chapters of a book dedicated to one story and then abruptly *tell* the reader that everything has changed but not bother to *show* them how it happened.
Fraction does his best with the abrupt change in storyline (and he may have even had a hand in the new direction of the book and the cosmic crossover that plays havoc with this book's narrative) but the effect is incredibly jarring. "The Five Nightmares" does a great job of establishing the world of Stark, S.H.I.E.LD. and the supporting characters, but all of that fine work is flushed away because of some alien crossover story that takes place completely off-stage.
The second story has Stark Industries in ruins and Tony on the run from Norman Osborn and the authority of H.A.M.M.E.R. Unlike "The Five Nightmares", this story is populated with guest-appearances by other Marvel characters such as Madame Masque, The Controller, Captain America, Black Widow, Namor and Doctor Donald Blake (aka Thor). Unfortunately it all reads as if each issue has to meet a quota in its number of guest stars. And my biggest problem with all these heroes making an appearance is that if they know Tony is in trouble and that Osborn is a bad guy, why aren't they helping rather than just standing on the sidelines? If they're too busy to help, shouldn't they be too busy to just drop in? And where were all these guys when things were getting blown up in "The Five Nightmares"?
The core of the story (with Tony having to erase and regain his memories in the same way that a computer's hard drive is removed and restored) is a terrific premise, but because the story has Tony, Pepper and Maria Hill traveling all over the world, it lacks focus and intensity. And after twelve chapters of Tony as a fugitive, getting his memory erased and just trying to stay alive – the whole thing ends with a whimper rather than a bang. A huge "To Be Continued" banner should be printed on the final page of this collection.
It's because the two stories in the collection are so disjointed that the entire volume reads like an anthology rather than an on-going saga. And as satisfying as the first story is, the second story lacks the same intensity. "The Five Nightmares" established Tony's power and his essential role in world security both as a hero and as a military leader. "World's Most Wanted" is a total reboot of Stark's status and it negates the power of the first story. Mix that with the book's 'We need to get this out in time for the movie' anti-climatic conclusion and the whole package is unsatisfying.
I can't help but wonder how the book will read for people who enjoy the movie, wander into a store and grab the book because they are fascinated by the incredible first six pages of the story and its artwork. Will they be as tolerant as regular comic book readers? Or will they read the book and be frustrated by its abrupt shift and the unresolved elements of the story?
Because comic book readers are at times too tolerant and have a grudging, masochistic acceptance of these superhero events. We've learned to endure comic book crossovers and the havoc they create as a regular book is forced to temporarily transform itself into a square peg that is then forced into the collective, corporately mandated square hole.
Regular book readers aren't used to the harsh demands of the superhero industry known as 'Continuity' and 'The Company Wide Crossover'. They expect a story to be complete and self-contained. And while Fraction and Larroca deliver a good book, it's not crafted to stand on the shelf alone.
— Kevin Pasquino
Writer/Artist - Daniel Clowes
Publisher - Drawn & Quarterly. $21.95 USD
Hi, brother, how's it hanging?
You like the internet, huh? Ha ha. Maybe it really can bring humanity together, a world community, our bonds intangible and yet as strong and real as the wireless signals used to create them.
Jesus, your skin is ghastly. Do you ever fucking go outside?
I have an old friend whom I'll call Ken. He was my boss when we first got to know each other. Very funny, charming man. Looked like '80s Elton John and would dress up in a white dinner jacket, sunglasses and boater hat on Halloween sometimes. He also had a Rolls Royce convertible but managed the mail room at our company. Ken had been divorced a couple years when I met him, and lived at home with his mom and one of the most extensive collections of celebrity autographs on the West Coast.
Ken had stopped drinking, but liked to enjoy it vicariously through me, so in those days we'd hit happy hours and strip clubs, or hang out at his house and make fun of bad movies. Good times. The thing was, Ken was really broken up over his ex-wife. While he was still obviously horny and flirty, he really did for the most part seem resigned to bachelorhood, and he is still on his own.
Each on of us is the hero and villain of our own stories, and the engines of our own happiness or unhappiness. I left Dan up there in the previous paragraph alone, but to be honest, I've only seen him once in the past several years and the subject didn't come up. And when I say, "to be honest," you don't really know that, do you? Would it change the story to mention I, too, am divorced, and have been for five years? Or that Ken had such a great personality, I swear he really did charm a stripper into being sincerely into him, just for him. I saw that look in her face. And besides the joking and heavy tipping, he never took it to the next level by asking her out, and if he had I'm sure he would have been successful.
I could have made myself look more heroic by writing about the times I spent with him, making him laugh and not be so alone for a few hours, or more villainous by revealing how often I drove home drunk on those nights. It's impossible to write about yourself and not try to cast yourself in a certain light, revealing this facet and obscuring these others. Humans have a need to connect with other humans at various levels, and when we make these attempts to do so, we rarely reveal everything. It would be overwhelming. Do you have any friends with traits you've come to accept that, if you knew about those traits when the friendship began, you would cut off ties?
The more time we spend with people, the more we reveal, intentionally or not, and if the good stuff outweighs the bad, the stronger and deeper the connection becomes. Daniel Clowes' Wilson deals primarily with the title character's attempts at human connection and how difficult it can be. I was going to write, how difficult it can be, even under the best of circumstances, but the thing is, with Wilson the circumstances are always the worst. That is, he makes them that way. As the back cover copy informs us, Wilson is, "a big-hearted slob, a devoted father and husband, an idiot, a sociopath, a delusional blowhard, a delicate flower." I can't say that any of those descriptions don't apply to me at various times. I found a three year old email to a former coworker today that was an appallingly unhinged come-on…or maybe it was just sweetly awkward. It didn't work, either way. And hey, I've let air out of someone's tires, eaten cheese left out on the counter overnight, and helped a buddy move across three states. So based on the descriptions, there's some Wilson in me.
That said, I don't think Clowes is asking the reader to identify with Wilson so much as accept that Wilson's needs are not so different from our own or anyone else's. Wilson is an asshole. My intro above mimics a typical one page gag early on in the book, Wilson starting a conversation with a stranger but quickly shutting them off or otherwise offending them, breaking that connection, curdling that opportunity for human interaction, a friendly exchange of information or views. It doesn't take more than a few pages to realize Wilson is a pretty loathsome being.
Clowes has long worked with unappealing characters. Sometimes he finds their humanity and sometimes, as with one of his fairly recent short stories, "Justin M. Damiano," a weaponized satire of a delusional film critic, he's just out for blood. The challenge with Wilson is just how much bad behavior can Clowes saddle Wilson with before the reader says no, this guy doesn't deserve any happiness or companionship.
I was quite enjoying the initial routine of the one-page gags that always ended with Wilson saying something asinine, as they're very funny in a kind of middle ground between Ivan Brunetti blackout humor and the social discomfort comedy of Larry David and Ricky Gervais. But they're sort of the amuse-bouche Clowes offers before the main course, bite-sized hints of flavors that will resonate more deeply as the meal progresses.
One is struck by the different art styles Clowes employs for each page. It doesn't seem meant to show off, as it's actually a fairly narrow range. From squat little bignose Wilson to heavily lined, more realistic Wilson, it's still generally about the same sort of backgrounds, the same indistinct cars and bland shops. One style or coloring effect may evoke some comparisons to Brunetti, another to Seth, but nothing is close enough to count as parody nor is there any stylistic shift in the writing to signify that, either. I think Clowes' reasons are at least twofold: 1) it just may be less boring than drawing 77 pages in one style, or a rewarding creative challenge, and 2) to make clear to the reader that each page is a different glimpse of Wilson, perhaps viewed by a different person each time.
All together, they form a picture of Wilson, but whether it's a complete or true picture is open to interpretation. Some seemingly stand-alone gags are deeper on reflection (his equation of heavyset women as maternal may explain his attraction to Pippi AND something about missing his mother, while the line about Pippi escaping her harrowing call girl life "without a scratch" is paid off double with the joke about her tattoo). He seems to have a friend or two, but they're only on the phone. Is he confiding to them or to other strangers? He jokes about being rich, but if he isn't, how does he make a living?
These little mysteries and the game of trying to figure out if this style is used for this type of emotion are kind of fun (I tend to think his use of a less cartoony style for the more emotional scenes is pragmatic—he can get better emotional effects with heavier shading and more realistic facial expressions), but the book takes off into more interesting—and pretty new for Clowes—territory as Wilson leaves behind his unconditional friend, his dog, and heads back to the old neighborhood to visit his dying father and then search for his ex-wife.
Clowes uses the death of Wilson's mother (which takes place before the book begins but is recalled in a rare moment of regret by Wilson) and death of his father (with no closure and only a condescending outburst by Wilson towards his father's nurse as a typically inappropriate show of respect towards the old man) to raise the stakes for Wilson reconnecting with his ex-wife and the teenaged daughter he didn't know he had. There's a kind of desperation to it—is this Wilson's last chance for connection? for family?—that adds savor to his overblown attempts at instant parenting. In a different context, it might have been fine for Wilson to be distressed that their daughter Claire's adoptive parents might not share his and ex-wife Tippi's values, but what values do either never-had-a-job sociopath Wilson and ex-hooker Tippi have? It's nice for him to defend Claire's honor from some ill-mannered teen boys, but Wilson regularly says foul things to strangers and got a blowjob from a prostitute not much older than Claire a few days earlier.
It's easy to dismiss Wilson as irredeemable based on so many examples of hypocrisy, cruelty, arrogance, vindictiveness and self-delusion. Oddly enough, I was reminded reading the book of the film, Up in the Air, which also featured a detached character trying to connect with someone and having the tables turned when the other person didn't behave according to plan. That film got its juice from one scene, where the detached George Clooney character tried to open up, only to find the woman he was opening up to wasn't really interested in that. She had a whole other life she wanted to keep to herself and his jumping out of the compartment she had for him was a deep offense to her. And you feel for him because, hey, who wants handsome George Clooney to look so forlorn? It's harder with Wilson. George Clooney may have fired people for a living and given talks about keeping one's emotional backpack light, but he didn't send dog shit to his ex-wife's family. He didn't scream in selfish rage at his silent, dying father. He didn't kidnap his biological daughter to try to form an instant family.
And yet, I did feel for Wilson. Not so much for the easy stuff, like his fairly uncomplicated love for his dog. The handful of contemplative moments he spends (centered on water, symbol of so many things but chiefly here probably humanity, since we are mostly water, and eternity) show a man who does want to figure life out, who isn't satisfied with being a friendless, unloved know-it-all. It's not so much about accepting Wilson's desire for love and communion as no different from what all humans desire, but to also own up to these desires as being selfish. Creating life, having someone around to feel close to, having friends to kick back with—these are all good things and they make us and others feel good. At the same time, feeling good is selfish. It's hard to say that Wilson's quest brought any positive to Pippi's or Claire's lives; easier to say quite the opposite. That doesn't make the intention wrong. Wanting a family is a good thing; Wilson just happens to be incapable of making it happen at the time. Later, he does seem to have found some small measure of happiness borne of compromises many of us make. Maybe he even finds enlightenment near the end, or he's just senile. Would that we all at least get the benefit of the doubt as our own stories end.
Hey pal, you really read this the whole way through?
Holy shit, the way people spend their time.
—Christopher Allen
Others have taken their shots at Pat Lee and NRama interviewer Troy Brownfield's softball question about his "bit controversial" past (as a guy who didn't pay his talent). But I think it's more fun to just substitute "pay" for "prove" in this part of the interview:
Nrama: At this stage of your career, does Pat Lee have something to pay?
Lee: I not out to pay anything to anyone to be honest.
But to give him his due, Lee is out to do a very pro-women, pro-decapitation story (not sure of his stance on creatures) about…honor? Hmm.
Nrama: What's the bottom-line assessment that you might give to fans that might be interested in the series? Of all the books on the racks, why should they check out this one?
Lee: It's definitely a fun ride throughout the series. Creatures, women's heads getting chopped off and limbs getting torn off. It's something you don't see a lot happen with women anywhere. The series is about women being courageous and fighting for family honor.
Just without their heads and limbs.
—Christopher Allen
The Invincible Gene Colan
Edited by Clifford Meth
Published by Marvel Comics. $19.99 USD
Tom Spurgeon puts it well in his essay in this book where he points out that Gene Colan was almost alone in not trying to emulate Jack Kirby's style in the '60s, following his own moody, atmospheric path, and how his contrasting style (as well as those of Steve Ditko and Wally Wood) gave Marvel a depth that led to their sales and cultural ascendancy. Well, he says something like that. I was too young to experience Colan's signature runs on titles like Daredevil, Doctor Strange or The Tomb of Dracula, and little of it was reprinted during my formative years. I think the first comic I bought drawn by Colan was a horror one-shot called Blood Scent from, I think Comico, an impressive effort shot from his uninked pencils. I knew he was great, but didn't really appreciate him until I got the Essential Tomb of Dracula and Essential Howard the Duck, big chunks of magnificent work seen maybe at their best, in black-and-white, though of course on cheap newsprint.
His Howard work grounded the book in a realistic base that both lent gravity to Steve Gerber's sociopolitical satire and made his more absurdist comedic ideas and characters stand out more sharply. As for ToD, those pages were loaded with atmosphere and dread in every shadow, but I think more important was his design for Dracula's face. Yes, everyone knows it was modeled on actor Jack Palance, which was smart enough because Palance was a formidable presence and had an interesting face. But I was always struck by how Colan changed that face. There's a joy to Palance, but not Dracula. This was not the face of the sly, seductive vampire. This Dracula was a pure predator, fanged mouth always open in naked thirst. Aside from a nice art job from Bill Sienkiewicz on an X-Men annual, I don't recall that many Dracula stories over the years, and I would guess part of the reason is how Colan's (and ToD writer Marv Wolfman's) presence loomed large over the character.
Colan has been ailing, lately suffering from a shoulder injury that prevents him from drawing, and editor Meth has put this book together with Marvel as a combination of tribute and charitable act, as I believe the proceeds will go to Colan for medical bills and the like. This is a very nice thing and I would have been happy to buy the book if it was only half as good as it is. As it is, it's functional, starting with a bio that quickly calls out some of Colan's early work with a few quotes and scans of different sizes from thumbnail to full page. Even before this, there is some more recent art from Colan, perhaps even commissioned for this book prior to the injury. A nice gesture, but it, and the large number of other commission pieces of more recent vintage show how difficult drawing must be when one is in their 80s. Totally understandable, just expect this going in.
I think Colan's Marvel work would probably be better served by presenting fewer pieces in quarter-, half-, or full-page sizes. There are chapters devoted to each solo book on which Colan had a significant run, and Meth and designer Richard Sheinaus often jam six or nine small cover scans on a page to diminishing returns. It's just hard for the work to stand out the way it should at that size. I should point out that those small covers alternate with larger pieces, original uncolored pages, numerous pencil sketches and a couple multi-page sequences, including a fantastic Doctor Strange vs. Nightmare sequence shot right from the old comics. So it's a balanced design sense, trying to cover all the bases in an admittedly tight 130 pages. I'm just saying I'd prefer more of the larger reproductions and sequences to enjoy Colan's storytelling, but aside from a couple minor production errors with credits getting jumbled together, this is a pretty handsome tribute and primer on Colan's dignified Marvel career. If, like me, you want to see more, well that's what the Essentials, Masterworks and back issue bins are for.
—Christopher Allen
I'm late to the party, but I've really been enjoying the criticism of Tucker Stone this year. He's usually funny, often scathingly insightful, and I always respect someone who will intentionally "throw" a review by writing about something not at all related to the work in question, just because it's more fun to do a little short story, piece of dialect, or non-sequitur. He did eventually reveal himself as a pussy with his unabashed fondness for Power Girl, but I guess we all have our sentimental side. Speaking of which, Tucker gets serious again with this review of one of my favorite mangaka's, Taiyo Matsumoto. He also sets a record here for use of hyphens. By the way, if you enjoy Taiyo Matsumoto's work why don't you visit http://www.nationalpayday.com so you can get a cash advance to purchase his collected works.
—Christopher Allen
Blue Spring is a collection of Taiyo Matsumoto's short stories revolving around teenage boys. In the back of the book, he describes the real boys that inspired the stories with no small amount of awe, a fact that seems to have escaped some of the articles I've seen about the collection. (Many of the characters in the stories, and by extension, Matsumoto himself, have been criticized for its depiction of amoral, hedonistic behavior. It doesn't read that way to me, partly because Matsumoto seems so obviously to be celebrating a fantastic version of the lives he depicts in hopes of capturing what he imagines a gravity of feeling he was observing from the outside.)
"They answered to reason with their fists and never questioned their excessive passions. Their frankness and their sense of being true to themselves won me over. They were my heroes." - from Matsomoto's afterword
In Matsumoto's description of the boys that inspired these stories, he refers to his position as one of photographer, an ad-hoc water boy who was instructed to take pictures of the boys at the height of their powers, prior to the years when their own children and adult responsibilities would consume all of their time. The afterword probably shouldn't be taken as straight gospel for a future biography of Matsumoto, but for the purposes of this collection, there's an obvious connection to be made when the author describes how he would warn the boys about the environmental conditions that could lead to a bad photograph. Blue Spring will be another document, one where he's going to capture these heroes as accurately (and artistically) as his conditions will allow—but that means the end product is going to be his art, not necessarily the truths that they're expecting.
So what did Matsumoto want to see? Men—young, fraught with as much confusion as the age enforces, still attempting to define what sort of rules they want to play by, and starting to grasp how absent those rules are when others don't share them. "This Is Bad," the final story—which is, without a doubt, a personal favorite—reads like an absent-minded fantasy of annihilation, abandoning completely the previous stories back-and-forth dalliances with reality.
In that one, a young man accidentally engenders the wrath of a psychopathic punk, who then chases the boy all the way across the city, surviving a horrific car wreck and running fast enough to keep up with a Japanese subway, only to finally catch and (we assume) shoot the boy in the face. Interspersed throughout are passages depicting what's going on with the young man's current crush, a pretty little girl who succumbs to the charms of a nearby sleazeball while waiting for the boy to arrive, which, of course, he never will. Because he's dead, and he died thinking of her, and at that exact moment, she's riding away with the sleazeball. Tough shit, the story says.
None of the other stories approach the over-the-topness of that one, but they're all as pointed, even when the small pages explode into double digit panels of interlocked triangles that spiral around the page, as they do in "The Family Restaurant Is Our Paradise!" In that story—possibly the most difficult one to parse, as it's tied up in a chaotic mix of separate conversations and imagination, with multiple characters collapsing into each other while Matsumoto packs graffiti into the corners of every one of his multiple panels—Matsumoto seems to be trying to deliver the sort of moment when just-woke-up, still-sorta-drunk makes the mistake of going somewhere that's noisily going about the business of life. A little girl walks around calling people "doo doo" while fights break out amongst the staff, somebody tries to tell a story about Michael Jackson, a topless woman stares at the reader and delivers a double-meaning "So hot," and nearly everybody ends up resting their exhausted heads on their hands, elbows splayed. Nobody gives up, though. That's the gag, actually—as in most of the stories, the kids are on their way to a young adulthood, and their determination is 15 kinds of extreme. The problem is that this determination has no direction in which to focus on — everybody wants to be taken seriously, but they don't have anything they're serious about (And thank god for that, because youthful purpose is the single greatest murderer of youthful pleasure that I can think of.).
Matsumoto's writing is a tough thing to analyze in great detail, even tougher when you're a dabbler in manga. Writers with a more comprehensive knowledge of Japanese comics are, unsurprisingly, a better source to determine the breadth of what Matsumoto is doing here, and writers who can read Japanese would undoubtedly experience these stories in a purer way. (More than half of the pages of Blue Spring include a translation of the graffiti and sound effects that occur throughout the book, and while "getting used to right-to-left" isn't anywhere near as difficult as some comics readers like to claim, getting used to the delayed reading of that bottom-page-translation is. In something like Blue Spring—where the angular panels and fluid, rapid-fire dialog try to enforce a read-this-quickly tempo — having to stop and connect the graffiti to its location becomes such a nuisance that I eventually gave up doing so.) Still, the general thrust of the collection seems clear enough—Matsumoto is trying to capture the same sort of youthful emotion depicted in Black and White (or Tekkon Kinkreet) and Go-Go Monster. In Blue Spring, he's just skewed the age bracket higher, opening the door for harder violence and wetter sex.
His art, of course, should have no introduction. Although Go-Go Monster and Black and White go further into rougher lines and much starker chiaroscuro, Blue Spring's characters share the same clean-lined buckets of teeth, they have the same bendy limbs fighting for expression against their floating clothes, and their emotionally expressive faces always stand out against their surroundings. But in Blue Spring, things seem to be turned up even more. A man's explosive vomit splatters in a torrential mountain in front of him, like some kind of hideous sculpture. Censor boxes hide the wall-eyes of a bored gang as they take turns kneeing some kid in the balls. A shadowy outline falls to a splattered death, clapping the whole way. A Michael Bay car crash depicts the driver's head squirting through the windshield, so he can kiss a telephone pole at the same second his engine does. All of it, depicted with the same extremely contoured lines that a Pilot V5 might produce. (The occasional grays that appear are the only aspect of Blue Spring that I could honestly say I dislike. Compared to the obsessive dots and lines that Matsumoto uses for texture and shadow, the grays that show up are such an unwelcome change that I wish there was some evidence that they were put in against his will.) Again, the Japanese novice problem prevents me from speaking to how singular Matsumoto's style may be, all I can say with accuracy is that what he's doing seems incredibly unique—and if that's totally incorrect, all the better. Being wrong about that just means that my list of unknown talents can get longer, and I've got no complaint about that.
In the cult of comics blogging, I'm as guilty as many, with a long list of regretful moments of generous praise that strikes me now as being overly kind. I don't think I'll regret saying that this is the kind of comic that I would love to see more of, no matter who produces it. It's eclectic and demanding, hysterically immature at times, and yet, from beginning to end, its viscerally entertaining, visually fascinating, and extremely unique.
I liked it a whole lot.
Tucker Stone runs The Factual Opinion, writes a column for Comixology, and also creates the Advanced Common Sense series of video comics reviews.
Area 10
Written by Christos N. Gage
Art by Chris Samnee
Published by Vertigo Comics. $19.99 USD
It's hard to figure out the publishing strategy for this Vertigo Crime imprint, but the common elements seem to be to avoid straight crime fiction and instead introduce a fantastic element. I kind of like the smaller-than-comics size, though.
Gage is a prolific comics writer, and it seems that if one follows Wildstorm or Marvel's event tie-in books at all, you've read something he's written. That said, I haven't read enough to have formed an impression of just what he's about, especially as a lot of those Marvel books are in large part servicing a plot thread generated by another writer.
Chris Samnee is an artist with whom I'm slightly more familiar. I believe I first noticed his work on the Capote in Kansas graphic novel. His work is a bit stolid but overall clean and effective. I particularly like this raft of FCBD sketches which may give a clue to why he got this gig: he's fast. There aren't a ton of artists willing to pencil and ink a 180 page graphic novel, I'm guessing.
As mentioned, the story itself has a kind of fantastic or supernatural element to it, involving trepanation (drilling a hole in the forehead to get air to the brain and give the person a third eye—the ability to see into the past or possible futures. It's a fresh idea that would be treated with derision by TV detectives but here is allowed to flower in the unlimited budget of the comics page. Even so, it's mainly used for extra flavor for the story and to open up the story for an offbeat climax. Mostly, this is a fairly straightforward mystery in the police prodedural aspects and the lead character, a good detective with some painful event in his past and a demanding case that becomes personal.
Gage makes good use of the lengthier format to cover the ground of a movie, teasing out revelations, building up a romance out of a professional relationship so it's not ridiculous or wildly inappropriate, and offering the reader their money's worth in plot twists. Sure, you know going in it's probably going in that things will probably end with a desperate fight with a crazed killer, and you see some of the other developments coming ahead of time, but there are a few "okay, nice, you got me" twists in there as well. And for his part, Samnee isn't a mind-blower but is consistently good throughout, which is saying something across 180 pages. He spots blacks well, if occasionally overdoing it somewhat, and his environments feel solid and real. He does very well with the grislier moments but acquits himself admirably on the lighter, more romance-oriented scenes, too.
Despite a terrific cover, the lack of big names might make this one a bit of a sleeper, but it ends up a pretty good yarn.
— Christopher Allen
Rip Kirby Complete Comic Strips 1946-1948
By Alex Raymond and Ward Greene
Published by IDW Publishing. $49.99 USD
IDW has done remarkable work the past few years with their imprint The Library of American Comics collecting so many of the great newspaper strips like Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates and so on. Rip Kirby is one with which I had no familiarity before reading this volume, which collects the first couple years of the strip. After years of apprenticeship, doing inking and background work on strips like Blondie and Tim Tyler's Luck, Raymond got his big break with Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, and just a few weeks later, Secret Agent X-9, that one written by pulp writer Dashiell Hammett.
It's interesting to learn that Flash Gordon was created to compete with then-popular science fiction strip, Buck Rogers, and Jungle Jim was assigned to Raymond to create to package with Flash Gordon, and was greatly influenced by Frank R. Buck's novel, Bring 'Em Back Alive, which also inspired a movie. It's not a value judgment on Raymond that his first works were born with such commercial concerns and all derivative of already-popular works—he was 24 and trying to make a name for himself. But aside from the suspense generated by Hammett's X-9 scripts, the main reason any of those strips are remembered today is Raymond's artwork.
With Kirby, Raymond takes his experience drawing modern settings and what he sees in the Expressionist/Impressionist lighting and staging of the noir films of the time to create a new kind of detective strip. It's a talky strip much of the time, and often set inside or during daylight hours, but Raymond is a master at spotting blacks for contrast and depth. One can argue it's more personal in that Raymond had used his increasing fame to strike a deal for majority ownership of it, or that Kirby draws more on Raymond than his previous characters as far as a combination of urbanity and recklessness (Raymond, a sports car enthusiast, died in a car wreck in 1956), but it's still an idea as commercial as all get out: tough but smart and sensitive private detective with a fashion model girlfriend—a combination to draw both male and female readers.
While readers today are denied the experience of reading these strips in their original time and context, commenting on the fashions and changing social mores of the day (certainly Kirby galpal Honey Dorian hanging around him so much without a wedding ring or any clear, public stance on their relationship would have raised some eyebrows in real life), or in Honey's case, depicting the new fashions, inspired by Dior and others. This must have been a treat to read before work for the Des Moines shopkeeper or after the kids had gone to school for the Tallahassee housewife. The reader today will appreciate the wide array of fashions Raymond depicts, and the handsome decor and vibrant settings, because Raymond's level of craft is so high that the strip is enjoyable to look at even if not much is going on.
It's not often that there's a lull here, though. Raymond quickly gets past shots of an idle Kirby practicing putting in the den and onto a murder case, and as each serial lasts at least a month, there is ample room for plot twists and the development of colorful villains and supporting characters. Honey Dorian and Kirby's relationship with her is rather patronizing—despite being a fashion model in much demand, she spends a good deal of time helping Kirby with his cases or fretting over Kirby's feelings towards her. And no wonder, since he takes pleasure in withholding affection. Occasionally, she does prove to be a valuable asset rather than toy or damsel in distress, and at least once Kirby does regret playing her.
The third serial, "Enter: The Mangler," introduces competition for Honey in Pagan Lee, whose name, dark locks and demeanor have her pegged as a femme fatale, but she's ready for a new role. Her attraction to Kirby, and his belief in her, lead her to reform and shut the door on her criminal past for a Hollywood career. Given these complications, she ends up more sympathetic than Honey, whose only real struggles in life are Kirby and the Kirby-related trouble she gets into.
That storyline finds Raymond working in a great balance of reasonable detective work, suspenseful plot churning, soap opera romance and memorable character design. The Mangler's face is grotesque but believable, not like a Dick Tracy villain at all but nearly as memorable. Raymond is terrific not just because he can come up with an interesting, realistic face but that he can reproduce it, again and again, from any angle. In purely visual terms, "The Doll's House" is the most fun, featuring a horrible, spiteful villainess with an unforgettable face and lots of fighting in jungles and caves and on beaches.
Ward Greene doesn't get much mention, but as Raymond's editor, he and Raymond would meet once a week to hash out the beats for the next week's continuity. This may explain why some stories wind along longer than others, as things were going well and new ideas were opening up. Greene was also a successful novelist and this may help explain the more sophisticated storytelling. There are degrees of guilt and punishment here. The bad don't all die and many aren't so bad. Murderers are caught or killed, of course, but Pagan Lee is allowed to slide for past offenses by showing she can make good now, and a rich couple of kidnapers, motivated by love, are shown the best solution for all parties concerned by Kirby. With his pipe, spectacles and broken nose, Raymond's design for Kirby perfectly captures that this is a detective who can mix it up if he has to but wants to listen and consider first before making a judgment.
A masterpiece of artistic skill but also intelligent, amusing and occasionally thrilling in its storytelling, Rip Kirby is a valuable addition to the serious comics reader's library. I hate to end on a bum note, but the cover design, with the teal background, orange logo and blurry Photoshop shadow effect, is awful. But I like the book.
— Christopher Allen
Diversions of the Groovy Kind has a nice group of splash pages from Keith Giffen's 1977 run as penciler of Marvel's The Defenders. It makes me kinda want to read them, which I think I have somewhere, but what struck me first is not so much what Giffen brings to these pages but what you get from Klaus Janson. Giffen and Janson are credited as the "artists," which can cover a wide range of things, but clearly Janson is not just faithfully putting ink where Giffen's pencils were. Janson has always been an overpowering inker, but he's so good that usual works out fine, just different. Many prefer John Byrne or Frank Miller inking themselves, but Janson's inking over them resulted in some of my favorite comics art.
What you see here is a young Giffen who hadn't quite found his style yet. Not that he's ever settled on one style for very long, but he's not as confident here, judging by the results later when he's inked by Chic Stone. Chic Stone is an inker who will generally diminish the power of one's pencils, and we see an awkward Namor image for the issue where Stone inks Giffen. And earlier, once Janson has left the book, we see that what Giffen is most comfortable doing at this stage in his career is aping Jack Kirby's style. It's right there in the splash to #48 with a Kirbyesque Scorpio, Giffen and Dan Green doing a credible imitation of Kirby's distinctively jagged contour lines, while in the next issue we get an excellent, Kirbyesque Moon Knight. No surprise, as frequent Kirby inker Mike Royer inked this issue. Still, I much prefer a Janson job than another Kirby knockoff.
—Christopher Allen
I think it was appropriate for Brandon Soderberg at ComicsForSerious to call out Brendan McCarthy's Spider-Man: Fever #1 for a scene that he finds to be "insanely racist." I'll be honest, I didn't think anything of it at first, and even as I started to post this I was disagreeing with Brandon. I mean, "thass" is a stereotypical pronunciation of "that's" because that's how some black people pronounce it. Not all, not most, but enough that it's become part of the stereotype for the urban black guy. I think there are probably enough guys in NYC who talk like this that it's not racist to choose one as a small character in a scene set in an NYC apartment building. An old couple on the street below might speak with some Yiddish inflection, the hot dog vendor might sound Italian with his extra a's at the end of words. You want characters to have a bit of zest to their dialogue, and as long as that ethnic shorthand isn't used to enforce stereotypes, no problem. My black California friend Steve speaks differently than my white New Jersey friend Jay, but not a lot, and in a scene you may exaggerate differences a bit for dramatic effect, so each character sounds different. A twenty-two page adventure comic doesn't lend itself to developing supporting characters or even having them speak much like real people. You try to make it as quick and punchy as you can.
It also threw me off that in writing about stereotypical dialogue, Brandon kind of undermined himself with this ramped-up patois that he has no problem avoiding later in the piece:
See, back when those shits were sorta hard to find and I had like my Comics Journal issues and maybe one or two dusty-ass collections from my local, suburban library and that's it, the idea of Ditko (or Kirby or Moebius or even, Frank Miller) bubbled-up into something no artist could never live up to.
It's also not that big a deal that the black character is dressed somewhat anachronistically. You could leave it at McCarthy not doing his homework and being out of touch. But that leads me to ultimately agree with Brandon in wondering just what McCarthy's point was in using this character. The joke in the scene is that after Spider-Man defeats the Vulture in the guy's apartment, he dials 911 from the guy's phone, and when Spidey tells him this, the guy looks all worried because he's going to now have to deal with cops. Brandon surmises that McCarthy is implying the black guy must be a criminal to be worried. I think one could also interpret his reaction as concern that, guilty or not, having police in his apartment, taking a statement, could just be a huge hassle, and certainly the stereotype exists of the police who needlessly hassle black people because they can. But however McCarthy intended his punchline to be interpreted, there's undoubtedly a racial component that isn't very funny and should have been changed to be less potentially offensive. Maybe make it a white, hippie-looking guy, so the impression is that the police might find drugs in his apartment or something. Sometimes a black guy is just a black guy, but in the context this one is used in the book, it's hard to defend.
P.S. I'm a new fan of Brandon's blog. Read it.
—Christopher Allen
Damn you, Kevin Pasquino and your well-written review! I agree with all of it. Not as good as the first but well-done and pretty character-driven. More than ever, you equate bad boy Tony Stark with bad boy Downey but his momentary fall from grace is justified in the film. That was an uncomfortable scene, drunk Tony in his suit, especially as I think it featured the late DJ AM. Wasted potential indeed.
Yes, Black Widow's presence didn't make a ton of sense, and between all the action sequences and other plot points the opportunity for a good love triangle between Tony, Pepper and Natalie/Natasha was wasted. Vanko/Whiplash knowing Stark would be driving didn't make sense, nor did it make much sense that one dude could get all those drones together plus a kickass new set of armor in what appeared to be a couple days. Still, I can't say that the logical failures didn't all lead to some good action scenes, although I did find IM2's climax to have much less real threat and personality than the one in the first film.
As far as acting, Downey is still great, a delightful rogue who mostly has the right idea but doesn't have time to explain it you. Some of the best scenes find him spitting out big chunks of dialogue while fidgeting, preening, always trying to seduce whoever he's speaking to, whether an individual or crowd of thousands. Cheadle brings little to James Rhodes, ScarJo is mostly wooden and her hair looks weird. Clark Gregg and Garry Shandling are suitably unctuous. Rockwell is great as the Stark wannabe, and Paltrow makes the most of her meager chances. You really do feel like she's someone for whom you'd want to improve yourself. Rourke does his best with his inexpressive, ruined face, bad Russian accent and beer gut. He seems to have shown up on set with his own clothes and cockatoo and talked director Favreau into using all of it. Actually, Favreau seemed to want to make up for Rourke's mug by letting the hair appliances and dye, costume, bird, constant toothpick and tattoos do the acting instead.
It's not that the film really answers the question of whether the greatest inventions and weapons of modern times should be entrusted to one spoiled genius fairly—the answer is yes here because Downey's charisma will charm a yes out of you. At least it asks the question, though. A question the movie raised with me, though is why Gene Colan (along with Bob Layton, John Byrne, the Romitas, Matt Fraction and others) gets a Special Thanks in the end credits but apparently within the millions spent on the film and its promotion, no one can kick in a few grand to take care of his medical bills. I'm not talking about a creator credit, ownership or anything like that, just a small bit of money. It's a well-made film, however.
It's an interesting experience, watching a movie based on a comic book when the only thing you know about the comic book is what you've learned from the movie.
It was surprising for me to realize that given all my years of comic book collecting that the only "Iron Man" comic book I had read before seeing the first movie was the classic Demon in a Bottle storyline. And even that storyline I knew more for its historical context rather than actual story itself. It's not like after reading that story I sought out other comics or collections with the character. As far as I was concerned Tony Stark was just a spoiled Batman with a somewhat cooler suit. But Batman had the much cooler villains, so as far as I was concerned Batman would kick Iron Man's ass.
But the first Iron Man movie certainly made the character captivating. Here was an egomaniacal narcissistic playboy who re-invented himself as a hero. He assumed the role through necessity and there was the sense that he was just playing a game of dress-up and make believe when he pulled on the armor. It was his heroic voyage of discovery that made for a great movie.
And with great movies comes great responsibilities for great sequels.
Iron Man 2 manages to re-unite the main cast with the original director and also add a handful of
new inevitable action figures – sorry, I mean "New Characters". The story involves Tony Stark's resistance to the American government's request for the Iron Man technology, the arrival of a new villain and Tony dealing with the burden of being the world's first unmasked super-hero.
Iron Man 2 is a very good sequel. It manages to continue some of the subtle themes of the first movie (What is the moral responsibility of the wealthy? Can a modern industrialist ever be more than just a war monger? Is it possible for a powerful man to redeem himself and become a better person? And, is it ever okay for the boss to sleep with his secretary other than in "Mad Men"?). But the movie always remembers to deliver enough slam-bang action to keep most fans cheering.
The movie's main hero and its secret weapon is actor Robert Downey, Jr. It is simply impossible to imagine another actor doing as good a job as he does with the title role. There is the sense that Downey has lived the character's life, with all his real-life bad boy shenanigans and the lost years of productivity due to his debauchery, and in the same way that many people hoped that Downey (the actor) would overcome his failings, the audience hopes that Tony Stark (the character) will rise above his as well. We like, we are amused by and we perhaps even envy the swagger, the arrogance and the decadence of the character. But Downey makes us hope that Tony Stark will mature a wee bit but at the same time still remain a bit of a cad.
For comic book fans the movie has knowing nods and clever winks to other Marvel characters and there is even a scene that was somewhat awkwardly borrows from the Superman movies as Tony experiences a Jor-El type moment. But the movie manages to remain subtle when inducing those moments of comic geekasms. Even the appearance of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and his Avengers Project was established in the first film: comic fans will know what's being foreshadowed; movie fans will just get a sense that there are more heroes to come.
The film's only flaw, and it's a problem that many comic book sequels have, is something I like to call The Star Wars Action Figure Expectation: Yeah, sure, it's a great film, but where are the new toys?
All too often the sequel to a big budget action movie has to populate itself with too many new characters in order to ensure there are enough new licensing opportunities. Batman and Robin had Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Batman, Robin and Batgirl. Spider-Man 3 had Venom, The Sandman, Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane, Eddie Brock and Spider-Man. That's a whole lot of characters for your McDonald's Happy Meals.
Iron Man 2 only slightly suffers from having too many cooks in the kitchen. But at least most of them manage to add some spice to the final presentation.
To this movie's credit they never refer to Mickey Rourke's character as the goofy sounding "Whiplash", so it's the muscular and angry (and villainously named) Ivan Vanko who forces Tony to re-examine his continued role as a weapons
manufacturer and the legacy that his father has left for him. Rourke is adequately creepy and menacing in the role, but I'm not sure if the Russian scientist turned bad guy will make a very interesting action figure.
The same thing can be said of Sam Rockwell's depiction of military industrialist Justin Hammer: while he's a great character (and almost manages to steal the movie until his character's rather wimpy exit from the story), I can't see any child fighting for the special limited edition three-piece suit exclusive ComicCon action figure.
But if those two characters are not perfect for the toy shelf, the next two are almost certainly designed for multiple packages.
James Rhodes returns in the sequel (with Don Cheadle assuming the role) and he manages to grab an Iron Man suit and make an action figure debut as War Machine (although, like "Whiplash", the character is never referred to by the comic book character's name).
The movie has a (somewhat sadly predictable) showdown between Tony and Rhodey as they both armor up and bash the crap out of each other. While the filmmakers try to justify the reason for the two men to duke it out in super-heroic fashion, the battle sequence feels forced and heavy-handed. It's as if things were slowing down a bit in the story and someone f elt that it was probably a good time to squeeze in some action.
But at least their battle and Rhodey's actions make some semblance of sense within the story. Scarlett Johansson's role in the film serves no purpose at all. Her character is there largely as window dressing until The Big Reveal and quickly after that scene she is once again shuffled into the background. She is given one action scene in the movie, but it makes no sense in the context of the story other than 'Wow, that looks cool.' And in a movie that does its best to rise above comic book clichés, her appearance (in black skintight leather and with super-spy miniaturized weaponry) is an intrusion in a story that is surprisingly character driven.
Because in the movie we grow to like Tony Stark and we end up cheering for him. He defies the government and manages to stay patriotic at the same time. He's naughty but likeable, egotistical but flawed. The action sequences in the film and the Iron Man suit become secondary to his character. Because it is a big budget summer action movie there have to be crashes and explosions and repulsor beams, but it's Robert Downey Jr. who really keeps things moving.
And it's because of the man in the suit rather than the suit itself that people will come back for another sequel. Because anyone can be Iron Man, but only Robert Downey, Jr. can play Tony Stark.
Oh, that and the fact that no one else can make eating a donut look so cool.
I hope you've been enjoying Guest Reviewer Month, which has obviously extended on into May due to some delays on our part here and there, plus our general no-post-on-the-weekend rule. We actually have a few guest reviews still to go, so check those next week and then we'll be well and truly done.
Working on some bigger books for next time, so just a few short takes this time out.
Amazing Spider-Man #630
Writer - Zeb Wells
Artist - Chris Bachalo
Marvel Comics.
I haven't seen any Bachalo art for a while, so this was kind of coming full circle for me. Not full circle as in I was as excited by it as I was forever ago when he was making a name for himself on Generation X, but I found I still like his style and he kept himself controlled enough not to let any excess derail the storytelling. I've largely enjoyed the rotating creative teams and weekly schedule, but this storyline (the first of a four-parter called "Shed") probably won't be one of my favorites. It's not badly written—Wells finds an interesting voice for the lizard brain part of Dr. Curt Connors, while Harry Osborn gives Peter some much-needed advice to stop being a jerk and just ask out the cute cop who's really a good match for him. But whereas the prior stories have been exploring either new versions of Spidey's rogues' gallery or finding new layers to the original members, this seems to just be the same "Connors loses control and becomes the Lizard" story. And to be honest, I kind of just want the guy to get a handle on it and just raise his on and just be Peter's occasional science consultant or something. Let somebody else be The Lizard. But if you want a more violent, gruesome Lizard story, with Bachalo lovingly drawing every shiny scale, here you go.
Brightest Day #1
Writers - Geoff Johns, Peter J. Tomasi
Artists - Lots
DC Comics
I ripped the entire Blackest Night mini a couple weeks back, but I don't see the point in going on and on in the same vein here. Suffice to say, I realize it's really my fault for thinking that calling something Brightest Day meant the grisly doings of Blackest Night would give way to something more hopeful, a miniseries that was in some way about rebuilding, even if there was a requisite menace to face. But no, this seems to be more of the same, with stabbings, throat slashings, a dead squid, a dead shark eating a guy, a trident puncture would, strangulation and attempted child rape. None of the heroes smile or seem like they enjoy being around each other. None even seem happy that some of there heroic friends are back from the dead. Even Deadman seems miserable not to be dead anymore. Two positives, though: 1) Despite multiple artists, the book looks a bit more consistent (if less indulgent) than Blackest Night, and 2) there's a panel where a pissed-off Sinestro is going to throw a yellow ring facsimile of a police car on top of some cops, and he has the pride? lunacy? brand consciousness? to put his Yellow Lantern symbol on the car's door. I think I'd prefer that kind of superhero stupidity to the deadly serious grind going on in the rest of the book.
I, Zombie #1
Writer - Chris Roberson
Artist - Mike Allred
Vertigo Comics
Cool twentysomething chick who happens to be a zombie, in a hip town that also has vampires and other monsters. She's got a ghost girlfriend who likes to hit the town with her. A were-terrier has a puppy crush on her but she's not into him. She eats brains to keep non-shambling and irreverent. She works as a gravedigger, giving her access to the cemetery after hours.
Roberson seems to be writing this under the impression that the reader won't be able to figure out the girl, Gwen, is a zombie until he reveals it at the end. Dude, the book is called I, Zombie, she's the lead character and the cover shows her with a half-rotten face. Also, she has a lavender skin tone throughout the book that gives away that she's not normal. Allred's always fun to look at, but aside from lots of different supernatural types I'm not seeing much originality here yet.
—Christopher Allen
If someone tries to tell you Fletcher Hanks was a genius, don't believe them. If someone tries to tell you Fletcher Hanks was an important figure in the development of superhero comics, don't believe them. But if someone tries to tell you Fletcher Hanks was one strange, f-ed up bastard who created some of the weirdest, creepiest, and (entirely by accident) most revealing comics of the Golden Era, that you can take to the bank.
As Ed Wood was to the Hollywood of the 1950s, Hanks was to the comic book industry of the late '30s and early '40s. Actually, that comparison's a bit of an insult to Wood, who managed to have a hand in an array of horrible-yet-beloved cheapies over the course of a decade. Hanks's career as a comic book writer/artist barely lasted two years. During that time, he cranked out crude, repetitive, simplistic filler for also-ran publishers. Then he disappeared. Doesn't exactly sound like the stuff of coffee table reprint collections, does it?
Yet in 2007, Fantagraphics Books published I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, a collection of Hanks features compiled by cartoonist Paul Karasik. Read any one of the book's 15 full-color stories, and you'll know immediately why Hanks has been rescued from obscurity. The mo-fo was just too damn twisted to go quietly into the dustbin of history.
Every story follows the same formula. Grotesque, grimacing bad guys perpetrate sadistic misdeeds on a grand scale, sometimes in the jungle (if the protagonist is Hanks's Sheena-meets-Kali heroine Fantomah), sometimes in New York (if the protagonist is huge-muscled, tiny-headed "super wizard" Stardust). When Fantomah/Stardust learns what the villains are up to, she/he warns them to stop. "Attend to your business!" the heavies scoff. Or perhaps "Confound that meddler!" Whatever the case, the evildoers keep on doing evil. And that's when the real fun begins — or at least the real fun as Hanks seems to have seen it, for his tales invariably end with two or three pages of elaborate, baroquely demented comeuppance meted out to the deserving by the artist's god-like good guys.
An example: A mobster named Destructo decides to take over America by, well, killing a bunch of people. When Stardust learns of the plot (he's watching Earth through a telescope on "his private star"), he does what any self-respecting superhero would do. He "transfixes" Destructo "with a superiority beam," shrinks the crime boss' body so that he's nothing but a huge head, flies through space until he finds a headless giant, hurls the Destructo-head at it, then watches in satisfaction as the villain is absorbed into the giant's body while screaming for mercy the whole time.
Wait. Did I say that's what any self-respecting superhero would do? My bad. Obviously, it's what any self-respecting superhero would do provided they were created by an embittered, paranoid son of a bitch with a persecution complex and an obsession with revenge.
And indeed, that's what Hanks seems to have been. I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! includes a haunting postscript: an illustrated story by Karasik that explores his obsession with Hanks as well as his encounter with the artist's son. Fletcher Hanks, we learn, wasn't just the odd duck one would expect. He was a brutally violent alcoholic who terrorized his family before finally abandoning them. He died broke and alone in New York City, freezing to death on a park bench in the winter of 1976.
And one could say, "So what?" For decades, Hanks was entirely forgotten, and it would be easy to make the case that he should have been. His art is vibrant and bold, but rudimentary and stiff, too. His plots are so basic and unvarying they can barely be called plots at all. And characters? There are no characters, only victims and two flavors of victimizer: villain and hero. Aside from the fact that the stories are bizarre and unsettling, they're really not worth remembering…or are they?
Sorry, yes, that was a cheap rhetorical question unworthy of Leonard Nimoy hosting an In Search of… about "ancient astronauts." What I really meant to say was yes. These stories are worth remembering — or at least reflecting on. Because when boiled down to their essence, the stories of Stardust and Fantomah aren't really as singular and peculiar as we might like to think.
When she's punishing the wicked, you see, Fantomah looks more than a little like a B-cup Lady Death. And Stardust's intricate, arcane tortures aren't really all that different from the punishments the Spectre and Dr. Fate used to hand out, back in the day. These are Old Testament superheroes — judgmental and all-powerful and blithely cruel. And that's the foundation for all the spandex-sporting do-gooders we know and love today.
"Beware of those in whom the urge to punish is strong," Nietzsche once wrote. Or maybe it was Goethe. It depends on who you want to believe when you plug it into Google. Tell you what — why don't we pretend it was someone else entirely? Let's say it was Fletcher Hanks's psychiatrist.
"Be careful," we can imagine him telling Hanks's son…or Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent or Peter Parker or Frank Castle. "That urge is in your DNA."Steve Hockensmith is the author of the New York Times bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. You can learn more about him and his other books at www.stevehockensmith.com. For a taste of the not-so-wonderful world of Fletcher Hanks, you can go to http://www.fletcherhanks.com/HOME.html.www.stevehockensmith.com. For a taste of the not-so-wonderful world of Fletcher Hanks, you can go to http://www.fletcherhanks.com/HOME.html.
I'm a fan of the first season of this Comedy Central series, but never got around to watching the second or third seasons. The network pulled the plug after the third season, which prompts the events of Drawn Together: The Movie: The Movie!
If you're not familiar with Drawn Together, the premise is that a group of cartoon
icons are living in a house making a reality TV series. As the movie begins, the series has been taken off the air and the housemates come to realize, as their swearing is no longer bleeped and their nudity no longer blurred, that they are no longer on TV. A little detective work shows that they've been replaced by the South Park-like Suck My Taint Girl, a filthy cartoon with a message, unlike Drawn Together, which is just, you know, filthy.
If you are familiar with Drawn Together and not offended by its politically incorrect and joyous embrace of filth and obscenity, there's little doubt you'll love the movie version. The freakshow antics and uninhibited sex and violence are all amped up way past 11, but the characters are intact from the TV series and the events proceed in quite a logical, if dirty as hell, manner. New character Suck My Taint Girl is a welcome addition to the cast, and the robot assassin I.S.R.A.E.L. (voiced by Family Guy's Seth McFarlane) provides all the hilarious and apt political subtext you could ask for. Comic book fans may appreciate (or be infuriated by) a superfast look at how some more familiar icons, like Aquaman, Batman and Robin and others have interacted with the world of Drawn Together. Hint: There is a blumpkin involved.
I liked Drawn Together: The Movie: The Movie!, although I can understand and even respect anyone who prefers to give the entire thing a pass. It's wicked, dirty entertainment with nothing wholesome on its mind. It made me laugh a few times and smirk a few others, and it is a worthy companion to the TV series. The special features are well worth checking out if you're a fan, especially for the look you get at the voice actors who portray the characters. They all seem to be having a great time, and some even seem eager to make more Drawn Together. That would be okay with me.
— Alan David Doane
A copy of the DVD was provided for the purposes of this review.
Alice In Sunderland
By Bryan Talbot
A truly great story is like pure energy: it can't be destroyed, only transferred into new and strange forms.
Using this dubious analogy, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland are nothing but energy. Lewis Carroll's clever, witty and imaginative tales have shown up in all sorts of versions, always all-new, always all-different, but still the same.
The latest movie adaptation, and there have been literally dozens, sees Tim Burton staple on some of his wonderfully weird action sequences onto Carroll's world in a fashion that has inevitably upset Alice purists, but still holds fairly true to the original idea, at least in a visual sense.
No matter what they do to the story—adapt it into a silent or animated film, or rip off characters for comic book villainy, or staple it onto other genres with adaptations that link Alice with Jack the Ripper—Alice survives her adventure and remains pure. It emerged from centuries of English tradition, while building up an air of myth and mystery around its own telling.
This is a subject worthy of closer examination.
* * *
Non-fiction comics confuse a lot of people. They can often show up in the fiction section of the local library—piercing journalistic works like the comics of Joe Sacco can sometimes be found sitting next to Dan Simmons' vast star-sagas.
They're not graphic novels or fictional sequential narratives but they can be bloody brilliant. Comics that delve into the deep, dark depths of history are often rewarding and illuminating. Comics that tell us something about the world we all live in will always find an appreciative audience.
The Big Book Of.. series, published by DC's Paradox Press in the 1990s, are some of the best real life comics ever produced. Each book is dense with information and massively entertaining art from idiosyncratic creators, and they all remain great reading, fifteen years after they were published.
Rick Geary has also found rich rewards by doing his own thing, dredging up past murders and mysteries that still resonate; Warren Ellis' Crecy is arguably the best thing he's ever written and Harvey Pekar's comics will be treasured as a snapshot of an ordinary life.
Sacco is a goddamn master at true journalistic comics and, like Pekar, people will be reading his books for centuries—a scholar of harsh lives at the turn of the 21st century who balances humour, righteous fury and an abnormally keen reporter's eye.
And then there are those that mix up their history and the fictions, and find there isn't really any difference. Alan Moore got his facts and mysteries all mixed up in From Hell and gave into the chaos, embracing it as a central theme. Further up the coast from the horror of Whitechapel, up in the North–East, Moore's ridiculously occasional collaborator started digging into the dirt of his latest home town and came up with Alice In Sunderland.
In a professional career of breath-taking quality, Bryan Talbot's 2007 book might be the best thing he has ever done.
* * *
The comic is built on the framework of Carroll, his young friend and their wonderful little story, As well as talking about their lives, it covers all the weird ephemera that surrounds it, and in a country like England and a place like Sunderland, there is a lot of crap to mention. Even if Talbot manages to cram a lot of it into a cabinet in his house.
At first, Alice in Sunderland looks like a hard read because of all that information, and it can be, with pages and pages of dense and informative text. But there is a lot of ground to cover often literally - and Talbot is there in several different incarnations to hold you by the end and give you a lift when you need it.
In looking at the influences that fed into Alice, it's necessary to look at the cultural make-up of the country and people who inspired the tale. Talbot goes all the way back to the time when woodlice ruled the world, digresses into the origins of a particularly English brand of bawdy humour and gives brief lessons on the British comic strip that goes back centuries.
Because of these dense info dumps, the artwork often slips into collage comics photos and caricatures and historical artifacts all jumbled around the page, surrounded by the running commentary.
Fortunately, even though Talbot has been doing comics long enough to avoid the dryness that history texts often encounter, it's still surprising how entertaining his presentation is. There are jokes, changes of pace and mood and a sense of general good humour, making it an immensely likable book, especially with the open sense of design and anything goes attitude that fill the pages.
This means Talbot can cover the big questions of mortality and legacy, but also allows him to have Scott McLoud show up as the Venerable Scott McComics-Expert in a blaze of divine rightness, or indulge in happy pastiches of Baxendale and Herge.
Anything goes.
* * *
For a while there, it looked like Talbot was having trouble finding a publisher for his book. The fact that they can publish 150 issues of Robin without any real need for it, but Bryan Talbot has trouble finding somebody to print his work, is a sad and troubling one.
It's staggering to think Talbot's brilliantly overcooked masterpiece ran into that obstacle. How could anyone doubt that Talbot would produce another intelligent, thoughtful and gorgeous piece of work that would find an audience hungry for some meat on their comic?
This creator did the best existential Batman story ever in two issues of Legends of the Dark Knight, gossiped like a Sunday tabloid in the Naked Artist and produced an intelligent and genuinely emotional story about a poor girl hiding from abuse in the fantasies of Beatrix Potter.
Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis all read Luther Arkwright when they were young and impressionable, and the influence is there to see. Last year's Granville was a sharp and entertaining badger-fuelled slice of Victorian ultra-violence that confirms to Talbot's English whimsy, infused with a flair for the grotesque.
And Talbot can draw some excellent monsters: if you ever get a chance to read Talbot and Pat Mills' Torquemada story in Diceman #3, take the opportunity—it's an extraordinary choose-your-own-adventure in the Hell of Bosch's garden of earthy delights that is still a worryingly enjoyable experience.
Beyond that, Talbot has been doing extraordinary things with light and timing since his early years and tackled worthy subjects within that experimentation. His work is always, always good.
* * *
Personal interjection: the first time I saw anything from Alice in Sunderland, it was the original pages hanging on the wall of the Cartoon Museum in London, just around the corner from the British Museum. This was a spectacular introduction to the work and I bought my copy from that museum two months later. It remains one of my favourite souvenirs from a trip right around the world.
* * *
Alice in Sunderland is such a dense read, and so full of stuff, that there is something new every time the reader goes back to it.
It's a free-wheeling wonder ride. It's a deep love for British pulp culture, stretching back decades, stretching back centuries – a straight line between the dirty jokes in the dance hall and the deep mining of myth seen in modern issues of 2000AD. Alice in Sunderland isn't just An Entertainment, it's an entertainment at the end of the pier, in the drunken singing in the dark, the shits and giggles on stage.
And it's also the mediation on mortality inherent in any thoughtful look at history. When it comes to our mysterious ancestors, all we have to go on are the things they leave behind to tell the world; "they were here, they did something." In the grand span of history, death ends all the stories, and there has been so much of that.
And that's the thing about life. It's all so fleeting. Talbot is certainly getting older and the creeping dread of the end is getting louder, when time has gone by so fast. There is the universal truth that life goes on—Talbot is the same age his grandmother was when he was born, and he can see the next generation coming through, and there is joy to be found there.
But there is always that fear of being forgotten. So we leave our mark in the places we live, in the correspondence of architecture and the street names that get left behind.
It's there in the stories that live between fact and fiction, the ones that get blurred in the whispers that pass between generations. Talbot's unique geographical study of the Sunderland area is heavy with unlikely myth and tall tales that get passed down as fact, until it's hard to tell the difference between the Lambton Worm and Jack Crawford and Alice in Wonderland.
It doesn't matter if these stories happened or not, or how they happened. It can be fun retelling them all over again, but the truth is overrated in this topsy-turvy world of wonders.
* * *
Down the rabbit hole we all go. It's a bit scary, but we always come back with wonderful tales of nonsense and humour.
This is a subject worthy of closer examination.
* * *
Bob Temuka lives in New Zealand, where comics cost a lot, but that just means he gets even more obsessive over it all. He is meant to post about comics every three days or so at the Tearoom of Despair, but has taken the month off to recharge, read and masturbate. He will come back. The name of his blog is supposed to be ironic, cos he is just full of love.
For more information visit mylifeinscribbles.com. A copy of the book was provided for the purpose of review.
Bringing Up Father: From Sea to Shining Sea, the Cross-Country Tour of 1939-40
By George McManus
IDW Publishing $49.99
George McManus' Bringing Up Father is a wonderland of Art Deco goodness. The venerable comic strip, as sampled in this hefty new book from IDW, is all clean, sleek, thin lines meeting at perpendicular angles. You could put your eye out on the lapel of Jiggs' coat. The colors in the Sunday strips pop out in vibrant yellows, blues and oranges. It always feels elegant and precise, even when its chronicling the haphazard adventures of some big-nosed fop. I don't know if Herge and the rest of the Claire Ligne crowd were serious McManus devotees, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they were.
The book, subtitled "From Sea to Shining Sea, the Cross-Country Tour of 1939-40," takes a rather interesting tack on the current clamor to reprint every memorable comic strip from the past, whether it holds up to modern eyes or not. Rather than attempt a complete, multi-volume collection—which would take up scads of books since the strip ran for decades, and would be a tricky sale since it isn't as fondly remembered as Peanuts or Prince Valiant—IDW opted instead to collect one of their most famous "runs" instead, a period in which the "Father" in question, the venerable, newly minted, nouveau riche Irishman Jiggs and his wife Maggie take their daughter and new son-in-law on a tour of the continental U.S.
This sort of thing happened a lot in the comic strips of that period. A lot of strips and syndicates found it a good marketing gimmick as local papers eagerly pledged to promote their strip for the chance to even get a mention of their city in the occasional word balloon. Even Winsor McCay had Little Nemo circumnavigating the globe in the hopes of winning newspaper attention back in the early days.
One wonders, though, why McManus and company went to all that trouble, as a number of the strips simply have Jiggs or Maggie saying "Well, here we are in Cleveland" from their hotel room, without any attempt to drawn the particular skyline of that city. No doubt a good deal of that was done in an attempt to save time and energy (the introduction notes what an exhausting project this was for McManus) but it happens with such alarming frequency that the reader can't help but feel a bit cheated? What would a McManus-drawn Jefferson City street scene look like anyhow?
No, the funniest and best strips in the collection are located in the first half of the book. These also play apon the more traditional set-up—in spite of his new wealth, Jiggs wants to keep eating corned beef and cabbage and kicking back beer with the boys at the nearby saloon, and Maggie will have none of it. McManus also gets good mileage out of a number of other scenarios that play upon issues of class and family though. A couple weeks of strips involving Maggie's wastrel brother—who is so lazy that we never see more than his reclining back—are especially amusing. McManus' strip is best when dealing with the vagaries of upper middle class life—pushy shopkeepers, annoying house guests, and of course, angry wives.
And while we're on the subject, there's no way to put this nicely: Maggie is a monster. A shrewish, vain, howling social climber of a woman, who when not heaping verbal or physical abuse on her husband, is inadvertently making herself look as foolish as possible. Many of the jokes, for example, rely upon how utterly clueless she is about her utter lack of talent, or that her family is nothing but a bunch of crooks and layabouts. Indeed, a constant running gag involves her exclaiming how her sibling or cousin is the greatest thing since sliced bread only to discover that they're in jail or have stolen the silverware.
The amazing thing about the strip is that Jiggs seems to genuinely care for Maggie. While he might cast an eye towards a pretty girl, he doesn't chase after other women, at least not in this volume, and he frequently attempts to mollify her and do right by her. It's perplexing since she doesn't seem to think very much of him. What's more, her ire doesn't seem to come from the fact that he's leaving her alone at nights so much as that he's hanging out with the former lower classes she now rejects (Her love of the opera doesn't come from any genuine appreciation but an understanding that that's the sort of thing you're supposed to enjoy when you're wealthy.). In short, she doesn't deserve him.
The book comes with two very nice essays—one by Brian Walker on the history of the strip and the significance of this particular run, and another by Bruce Canwell that provides some useful information on McManus' assistant during this period, Zeke Zekley. It's rare that assistants like Zekely get any time in the sun so it's nice to see some attention paid to his contribution.
Bringing Up Father may not be a strong enough strip to deserve the full, multi-volume treatment—the gags rely heavily on a familiar routine and the occasional rote punchline, and the inherent sexism in Maggie's depiction will no doubt prove distasteful to some modern readers. But it's a gorgeous and lively enough strip to warrant a lavish publication such as IDW has done, and I hope it can find another stellar "run" to follow up with sometime soon.
The Shield #1-8
Writers - Eric Trautmann, Brandon Jerwa
Artists - Marco Rudy, Greg Scott, Cliff Richards, Michael Avon Oeming
Publisher - DC Comics
Something I've been meaning to do is just take a contemporary series and run through the first year, give or take. I must admit, I do have a soft spot for the second tier superhero books, the ones about B-and-C-listers who will likely never have huge commercial success. One reason I tend to give books like this a chance is that they generally are less reliant on past continuity. It would be hard to name five Iron Fist villains or the five best Booster Gold stories, so why shouldn't the current creative teams feel free to come up with something new? Which brings me to the second reason I give books like this a shot, which is that you often find creators trying things out, sometimes displaying a more personal identification with their heroes than they do later, when they're established. The third reason is, these out-of-the-way sorts of books can sometimes be a little more self-contained.
That doesn't always hold true, though. I didn't pay much attention when DC announced a relaunch of the Red Circle characters into a few new series, and I avoided the J. Michael Straczynski-scripted one-shots(re)introducing each characterissues for each title because that seemed like a cynical gimmick. Why have a famous name write these initial stories and then hand the series off to other, lesser-known talents? If there was a story Straczynski really felt like telling, one would think he'd want to stay on, right? S
The first issue establishes one Lt. Joe Higgins as the new Shield, an Army soldier chosen to be a combination of Captain America and Iron Man. He's in a patriotic "cutting edge" warsuit that can do just about anything he needs it to, and there's plenty of military and technical jargon—suit efficiency at 82%, hand-to-hand combat protocols engaged, etc.—for those who like that sort of thing.
Combining Captain America and Iron Man is a fine idea but the execution is off. Lt. Higgins, our hero, is pretty dull, a straight shooter soldier who seems to have no interior life and not much personality. Aside from performing the missions given to him, he wants to find his missing father, and he's a little suspicious about his boss, General Latham. But aside from a nice scene in the first issue, where he tries to win the hearts of some Kahndaqi children by handing out superhero comic books (DC characters, of course), it's hard to get a feel for his personality beyond the fact he's not a bloodthirsty soldier. He doesn't give Cap-like speeches, but his occasional attempts at one-liners during fights are ham-handed and unbelievably redundant (when beating someone/something, he has made three variations on a "void your warranty" joke, which I have to call as a tic of Trautmann's and a lack of attention from editor Rachel Gluckstern. You don't read the script and send an email asking for a different line? And sometimes, Trautmann seems to put a joke in because it sounds like an ironic superhero line, without thinking about if it makes any sense. Example: Shield tells headquarters he'll be "entertain(ing) our guests," when the prior issue had established that he's the one out of place, causing an incident on Chinese property in Brazil. He's the guest/intruder.
I will give Trautmann the benefit of the doubt that his take on The Shield as being a soldier rather than a superhero was heading towards something before the title was cancelled. Likes like, "And there's nothing tougher to beat than an American soldier with a weapon" sound crass, but the first story arc, with Shield trying to rescue missing soldiers from a DC Middle East country called Kahndaq (a reference to Jenette Kahn?) at least presented a character with an anti-American viewpoint who wasn't a villain. He was just a boy who had seen too many of his people dead because of American interference. It might have been an interesting direction to follow, the super-soldier carrying out orders that increasingly ate at his conscience. But that's not where the book goes.
Instead, and I can't believe this was Trautmann's idea, The Shield runs into a number of minor DC superheroes, none of which would give him a sales boost. Sure, it's understandable he would work with The Web quickly, and later run into new versions of The Jaguar and The Comet—they're all old Red Circle characters, too. But Magog? The Great Ten?
The Magog issues were part of the aforementioned story set in Kahndaq, Magog (a character I don't really know) portrayed as an obnoxious, kill 'em all jarhead, contrasting with Shield's compassionate, levelheaded and resourceful approach. Well, sort of resourceful. When you get past all the technobabble, most of The Shield's plans are really simplistic. To get into the fortress where he thinks the captured soldiers are, he takes off his nanosuit (it's there but looks like regular clothes), gives himself up, and of course is taken to the leader, a mind-controller who is in turn being controlled by Gorilla Grodd. And look, if your first story arc has a team-up with Magog against Gorilla Grodd, then this is probably not a book that's going to last.
The next storyline involves The Shield trying to recover some technology in Brazil that has fallen into the hands of one Baron Gestapo, a cheap old Nazi villain with corny, '40s style robots. His name is so ridiculous I assume he's an old Red Circle character as well. The Great Ten, as I understand them here, are a Chinese superteam made up by somebody who knows a lot about American superheroes and maybe Googled a bit about Chinese mythology. The leader is basically imperious Chinese Iron Man, there's some mystic type we don't see much of, and a guy who multiplies as Seven Deadly Brothers, which is basically the same idea as Marvel's The Collective Man. The couple of confrontations Shield has with them are inconclusive and uninteresting, probably in part because they have their own series and it would be dumb to make them come off badly, although, you know, Magog does, and he's got his own book somehow.
One of the bright spots throughout most of the run (there was a fill-in issue or two) has been the development of artist Rudy. He draws from Tony Harris, J.H. Williams III and perhaps Jim Steranko for page compositions, often using a circular panel as a central image from which other panels radiate. While these bold compositions are sometimes distracting from the storytelling, overall it makes for a compelling, modern-looking book, his art doing its best to disguise the pedestrian content. Certainly having veteran inker Mick Gray, a frequent partner of Williams, accounts for some of the similarity.
Another positive in the run, and likely a reason some readers stuck with the book a little longer, is the work from Brandon Jerwa and his artists on the backup stories, which are often a bit longer than traditional four-to-six pages in length. His first serial, broken into a four-parter and then a two-parter taking place right after those events (probably an indication that the book was in trouble and Jerwa had to move onto other business) features Inferno, a flaming character whose facial features are different when he's on fire, and who has no memories of who he is or how he got these powers, though we learn as we go that he apparently laid backup plans in case of this memory loss. Greg Scott draws these, and while I haven't been following his work much since Sword of Dracula years ago, he seems not to have grown much since then. It looks competent but obviously Photoshopped, page composition in thrall to the reference material. In the hands of another artist, Inferno is something I would give a try to as its own book.
Better yet is the subsequent Fox backup, as Jerwa is joined by the reliable Oeming, who always brings solid storytelling and a certain stylistic swagger to his work. For his part, Jerwa brings a welcome sensitivity to his portrayal of the lead character, a movie star in Japan seeking answers to the murder of his father, which brings him into his father's world of double agents and ninjas. Familiar territory for Oeming but who better to have on-board, and there also aren't many artists who could bring such an elegant, Toth-like simplicity to the design of The Fox.
The final story arc for The Shield has begun more promisingly than the others, with The Shield now leading a team of soldiers against a high-tech terror outfit called Black Seven. Even better, he's forced to team up with The Brain Emperor, a creepy mind controller with tentacles coming off is head who was previously used by Grodd against him and the other U.S. soldiers. So, as with the Magog story, it's a bit of a buddy movie, but seems to have a bit more edge and purpose to it, maybe because Trautmann knows the series is winding down. In just a couple months, the series will end and The Shield and the other Red Circle characters become third-stringers in the DCU.
I'll savor the remaining Fox stories and it appears the main Shield story will be enjoyable enough. Ultimately, while Trautmann failed to impress with dialogue and characterization, a good deal of the blame for the series' lack of success has to be placed at the editorial end. We have a super-solder in a "lethal" warsuit who avoids killing, where the emphasis is on his amazing technology, but this wondrous suit leaves the top of his head exposed. The Shield shows some doubts about his role here and there, but the rest of the time is portrayed as a true-blue, unquestioning soldier, his government seen as justified in the various incursions he's assigned to carry out. There is no supporting cast to speak of and only a hint of a larger story to be told about The Shield's father that is always subordinate to one weak sister guest star after another. No one ever seemed to be quite on the same page and only Jerwa, Rudy, and probably too late to matter, Oeming, seemed willing to dig deeper to try to make the package work.
—Christopher Allen
Vol. 1- Japanese Cuisine ISBN 1421521393
Vol. 3- Ramen and Gyoza ISBN 1421521415
Vol. 4- Fish, Sushi and Sashimi ISBN 1421521423
Vol. 5- Vegetables ISBN 1421521431
Vol. 6- The Joy of Rice ISBN 142152144X
Vol. 7- Izakaya: Pub Food ISBN 1421521458
There are as many reasons for reading manga as there are manga to be read. I have lots of different ones and could go through my library and explain which interest sets coincided in the decision to take on each series in turn. There have been few manga published in English push so many of my pleasure spots at once as Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki's Oishinbo. Please do not equivocate a statement like that for one that might have read, "I think Oishinbo is the greatest manga ever created" because I'm certain that it isn't. But it is so damn satisfying to read!
Let's start again. Oishinbo is food manga. Oishinbo may well be THE food manga, given that it has been serialized non-stop in Big Comic Spirits magazine since 1983. The premise is disarmingly simple. A major Tokyo newspaper gives a few of its cultural reporters the duty of compiling the "Ultimate Menu," a single meal that demonstrates the very essence of Japanese cooking. The project is led by food critics Shiro Yamaoka, a humorously sullen anti-hero for the ages, and Yuko Kurita, his cheerful colleague who eventually marries the poor bastard. In order to prepare this menu, they are to travel around to different parts of Japan, sampling the local cuisine and comparing the relative merits and aesthetic differences between the various offerings. A rival newspaper has hired Yamaoka's father, Yuzan Kaibara, one of the most venerated food and pottery critics in all of Japan, to prepare a menu of his own. Yamaoka is estranged from his father due to their inability to tolerate one another and, predictably enough, these food duels between father and son often take center stage as they contrast different ideas about cooking and eating across a broad range of different kinds of food.
The English language editions, published by Viz Media out of their Signature line, are collections of several thematically related stories, often focusing on a specific food or element of Japanese cooking. The prospect of reading Oishinbo sequentially is intriguing. It would have allowed readers to make observations about the ebb and flow of different storytypes and the rise and fall of importance in various characters (as we can in the Collected Peanuts Editions) over the course of time. The realpolitik of marketing a series like Oishinbo to a non-Japanese audience dictates the pragmatism of the Viz editions and the reading experience hardly suffers anymore from the occasional narrative timestamp that shows that years have passed between subsequent stories than one might expect from reading any two Archie comics from 1975 and 1985.
While there is no shortage of food manga already available in English, most rely on histrionics that should seem equally familiar to fans of Iron Chef and Dragonball Z alike. Many, like Iron Wok Jan or the otherwise charming Yakitate Japan, rely on a never-ending series of escalating cooking battles won by superhuman cooking techniques.
Oishinbo, in contrast, derives its sense of conflict from a variety of sources that vary in their emotional intensity. More importantly, that sense of stake in the outcomes of the various cook-offs is measured in fundamentally human terms though often exaggerated in their importance to offset the terrible narrative loss implied by not being able to produce fire through one's nostrils. Often, Yamaoka and crew will help a struggling business turn around by showing them the error of mishandling a vital ingredient to their menu. Even if only patiently explaining how minor differences in procedure or food quality can effect a given dish, Oishinbo reveals its most important function; namely, holding a sustained and very personal dialogue between writer and audience about the nature of food and our relationship to it.
These themes become more pronounced when Yamaoka and his father tangle in one of their many bouts with neither naturally assuming either a progressive or conservative ideology in regards to what the essence of Japanese cooking might ultimately be.
Of the seven volumes currently available in English, each offers its own unique charms and can be read as self-contained works. The first one, Japanese Cuisine, is the best place to start as it establishes the status quo that underlies most of the series as well as introducing the Western palate to some of the fundamental techniques that shape all Japanese cooking. For those seeking density of information, the fourth volume, Fish, Sushi and Sashimi is fully capable of educating anyone that feels socially awkward about eating and ordering sushi for the first time and features an epic battle between Yamaoka and Kaibara-sensei. The fifth and sixth volumes (Vegetables and The Joy of Rice respectively) are information rich and ably encapsulate the Oishinbo experience.
My favorite volume, however, has to be Volume Two which deals with nothing but sake. Now I don't know about y'all, but my experience with sake prior to reading this book amounted to some piping hot fluid that tasted like someone had boiled a band-aid in a dirty bed pan. What I discovered was that sake is a complex and singular alcohol experience that draws on centuries-old brewing techniques to achieve a near miracle. I also discovered, on my own, that it can deliver a deceptive punch when imbibed among friends in superfluous quantities. While I can think of many comics, manga and bande dessinee that have inspired me to think or write over the years, Oishinbo is the first that ever got me to throw a party.
Hanasaki's character designs are very simple, standing in stark contrast to the food porn that he is asked to draw in each episode. While his layouts are more functional than dynamic, his visual storytelling is very clean and clears the basic hurdles of rendering believable human bodies in a wide variety of clothing as well as grounding them in credible environments. Though Kariya's narrative voice is very strong throughout Oishinbo, it is a testament to Hanasaki's skill that so many scenery and character demands are met without visible strain on the cohesion between picture and story.
If reading manga about Japanese food sounds completely unappealing to you, it may well be that Oishinbo is just not your cup of green tea. As a long-time fan of the original Iron Chef series as well as American food programs like No Reservations, I was able to discover, in Oishinbo, a much richer resource than either of those aforementioned foodie classics. Oishinbo blends just the right mix of fiction and fact to make each new volume a delicacy worth relishing again and again.
Rob Vollmar is the author of the Eisner-nominated The Castaways and Bluesman, both with Pablo G. Callejo, and has been a long-time, invaluable contributor to Comic Book Galaxy in its various incarnations.
April 2010
44 posts
Years of the Elephant
Writer/Artist - Willy Linthout
Publisher - PonentMon
Humans, we get on with it. Whatever befalls us, we tend to do our best to get back to our comfortable routine, what we do well or enjoy doing. Tragedy strikes, and before long the baseball player is back on the diamond, the actor out of the house and back making movies, the guitarist back playing the blues. In a couple of those occupations, I'm picturing real people, real men who suffered the ultimate horror of outliving a child. And now we have Willy Linthout, Flemish cartoonist, opened his front door to neighbors informing him his own son had jumped to his death from the roof of their apartment building. This is how Years of the Elephant begins, and from that point on it chronicles Linthout's struggles to hold onto his sanity in the face of terrible grief, guilt and regret.
Linthout's career up to this point was primarily as a humor cartoonist, so his dumpy, goggle-eyed little everyman is at first disconcerting: is this how one honors a dead son, with old hat cartooning tricks like worry lines and beads of sweat shooting off the character's forehead? Linkhout mitigates his standard style by leaving the pages in pencil form, emphasizing their urgency. The reader understands this is not about craft but about catharsis, and so much can be forgiven if not every sequence sings or flows seamlessly into the other.
Much of the book is a series of hallucinogenic episodes, Linthout's grief attacking his mind in different ways. He sees multiple versions of his insensitive boss. The chalk outline of his son's body appears before him, while his son's spirit seems to be trying to communicate to him in Morse code. He acts out in ways understandable but also shocking, even criminal. He takes longer to start to pull through than many, his delusions involving his son bringing him some small measure of comfort that may be lost if he starts to heal. There is no truly accurate timetable for the stages of grief, and so there was probably not much of an outline for the book. It takes as long as it takes. It's a harrowing journey where hope takes a long time to appear, but eventually it's there, in as simple a gesture as slightly changing the art style to represent the passing of something.
—Christopher Allen
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary by Justin Green
Reviewed by C. Tyler, long time Binky fan.
There are two boxes of the just reissued Binky Brown in his hallway. Sent by the publisher, they are Justin's complimentary copies. Still in the boxes, yet unopened.
It's not surprising. Those two boxes will probably remain like that for quite a long time. You see Justin is perpetually reticent about his great work. Sending copies to people, marketing, promotion — it's
just not his thing. In fact, this whole reprint project spearheaded by Art Spiegelman with McSweeney's has made him feel uncomfortably exposed again, as it did when he created Binky almost 40 years ago.
Why is this, you may wonder. Well when you read this book you will have the answer.
This underground classic from the comix era has held up. It remains a "ray" of pure genius. It is considered to be one of the most significant, groundbreaking contributions to comics history and Justin
is considered the Father of the Autobiographical comic. It has earned this designation not only because of its humor, artistry and craftsmanship but also because of its honest, unflinching appraisal
and confrontation of one's personal truth.
In support, I have listed here 5 salient points, in no particular order, that explain a little more why this is.
Innovation in form
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary was produced during the early days of the San Francisco Underground, when artists departed from the norm (DC/Marvel) and reinvented the form. Emphasis was on 'anything goes' in terms of subject matter, creator owned content produced with no editorial input. Justin was on the forefront of this energy. Without contract or provocation, he produced this remarkable work. Printed by Last Gasp, it was the first comic to grind away at the problems of self.
The personal
Despite the overwhelming compulsion/revulsion it took to produce it, Justin tackled sensitive, difficult and (for that time) stigmatized subject matter, i.e. mental illness. His foray into this taboo subject
matter was a first of its kind and opened the door to the flood of confessional/self-referenced style comics that have followed.
Some people think that Binky Brown is a "fantastic" story in the sense of having a manufactured intensity, that Justin had tweaked the truth here and there in order to intensify the drama of his situation.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This is an honest and painful work, representing Justin's reality then as it still does today.
Character empathy
When I first read Binky almost 30 years ago, I loved it for the places where it intersected with my own experiences: the 50s, Catholicism gone awry, the Chicagoland area. But I also loved the personal feel of the work. Right away, I felt empathy for him, the author/character. I couldn't believe how the story jumped off the page and shot directly at me — I had never had this experience from a comic book before.
Binky is impressive in its literacy. It's amazing how skillfully Justin orchestrated the tone and timbre of language and expression, juggling the erudite with the colloquial in a manner that seems
effortless. The narrator's voice is memorable and the emotional range of the character as expressed through language is significant, melding perfectly with the visual language, which brings me to …
Funk meets tradition
Binky Brown has an awkward elegance, drawn with a mastery that is rooted in the print tradition. Justin created a totally original visual lexicon, balanced it with traditional drafting skills and then goosed it with a raw twist of funk. His pages are structurally sound, the figures and details artfully and succinctly describe Binky's world. The lettering – superb. No wonder that Justin went on from this comic to become a master sign lettering man.
Justin is the real deal. He doesn't follow the trends. He risks. He gets in there and yanks out this incredible stuff, root canal style. He is the ultimate idiosyncratic artist. A loner. A creative genius. A
madman. That's what you want out of an innovator and a National Treasure, which I believe he is.
So if you haven't yet read Binky, smack yo'self up-side the head and go get a copy. It is a bookshelf essential. Along with his other works, like Sacred and Profane, Show & Tell, The Sign Game, Musical
Legends and many others.
On the back of Binky Brown it proclaims the book to be 'Must reading for Neurotics of All Creeds'. No doubt, this is a mandate for all of us.
C. Tyler is a comics creator who was first influenced by Binky Brown back in the 1980s. An Eisner nominated artist/writer, Ms. Tyler is the author of three solo books, The Job Thing (1993), Late Bloomer (2005) and her current project, a trilogy entitled You'll Never Know. Book I: A Good & Decent Man was published in 2009. YNK Book II: Collateral Damage is due out July 2010, with YNK Book III: Soldier's Heart scheduled for 2011. All published by Fantagraphics
Ms. Tyler is an Adjunct Professor of Art at the University of Cincinnati DAAP School of Art. Comics, Graphic Novels and Sequential Art is the title of her course.